The Hour of the Innocents

by Robert Paston

  Old Bronc was there, too. He’d been busted for holding up a gas station but must have gotten out on bail while awaiting trial. Deep into his forties, Bronc wanted to be Neal Cassady, although he didn’t know who Neal Cassady was. He claimed to be a former rodeo rider and did have bowed, busted-up legs. He said he knew Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and played a few chords on an old Kalamazoo, braying cowboy tunes. He was always willing to do the manual labor around the farm, rolling up his sleeves to reveal jailbird tattoos, and he acted as Buzzy’s collector when drug debts were overdue. He was unfailingly polite to me, jocular and humble. I hated to be within a mile of him.

  Beer in hand, I strolled over to talk to Tooker while the band was on break. At three in the afternoon, he was stoned and drunk.

  “You sound great, man,” I lied. As all musicians do.

  “It’s coming along. You know how it is.”

  “Glad it’s working out for you. Listen—”

  “Don’t say nothing. I know it wasn’t your fault. I know that, man. Screw them. Anyway, this is a better gig for me, you know?”

  “That’s cool.”

  “What’s eating Matty? What’s he got to be such a shit about?”

  “What did he do?”

  “Rick—our guitar player, Rick—asked him if he wanted to jam with us. And Matty blew him off, just walked away. What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing I know of. He seems normal to me.”

  “Yeah. Well, you didn’t know him before. He’s, like, spaced out or something. I think Nam made him crazy, that’s what I think.”

  “Matty’s not crazy.”

  “You didn’t know him. You didn’t know him, man. He was different.” He drained his bottle of beer. “Know what I think? I don’t think he ever got over Angela. That’s what I think.”

  “Come on, Tooker. That was back in high school.”

  He looked at me oddly. With something newly alert in his bleary eyes. “That’s, like, when it started.”

  “Angela told me she and Matty dated in high school, but it didn’t come to much.”

  Tooker guffawed. Drunk and splashing spit. He had the same north-of-the-mountain teeth as Frankie.

  “Oh, man … that’s rich. She told you that? Don’t you know enough not to believe a thing Angela says? ‘High school.’ Yeah, and then some. They were hot and heavy for years, until Matty’s old lady made him dump her. Then she goes with Frankie on the rebound, but she can’t get over Matty. I mean, what the fuck? Didn’t you pick up on any of this, man? Anyways, Frankie asks her to marry him, he’s head over heels in love with her, always was. But Angela just wants Matty and she’s holding out. Then Matty’s old man pulls that Army thing on him. Angela fucked his brains out, trying to get pregnant, trying to keep Matty from enlisting. But he went and did it, anyway. She only married Frankie for revenge.”

  “Is any of that true?”

  “What have I got to lose? They fucked me over good, ain’t? Some pals.…”

  “Nobody told me any of that.”

  “They never will. If I wasn’t drunk, I probably wouldn’t. You don’t belong, man. Don’t you see that?” He smirked. “I belonged. And look where it got me. Nobody says nothing, anyway. They don’t even talk to each other. They just fuck up each other’s lives and pretend like nothing happened.”

  Tooker was unsteady, grabbing for an invisible railing. One of the other musicians came over to get him. It was time for them to play again.

  “Hey, man,” Tooker said. “You. Bark. You want to jam with us?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Later.”

  The generator belched back to life and the noise resumed.

  Joey partied with a pair of gypsy bikers, forming a clique that shut out the general shabbiness. Probably talking business, I figured. Everything to do with the farm seemed decayed. Not decadent, though. “Decadent” was too classy a word. Buzzy’s whole scene seemed pathetic now. And I had to admit it had always been like that.

  I found Matty alone behind the house, nursing a beer by the dried-up well that Buzzy claimed led down to a realm of demons. Buzzy loved to goof on stoned kids, playing with their heads until he owned them.

  “These people are jackals,” Matty said when I came up.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I agreed to come.”

  “Joey knows how to get what he wants. You know these people, though?”

  “I’m not proud of it.”

  He looked at me with judgment in his eyes. “Do you … believe in good and evil? Like in the Bible?”

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  “This place is evil.”

  “I’ll grab Joey and see if I can get him to leave.”

  “Let him be,” Matty said. “Joey’s different. None of this touches him. He just glides over it. I’ve known people like that.”

  “You want to stay, then?”

  “No. I’m going to walk.”

  “It’s a long way.”

  “I can hitch a ride, once I get to the hardball.”

  “The Dutchies won’t pick you up.”

  “Then I’ll walk until somebody does.”

  “I’ll go with you. This place gives me the creeps these days.”

  We started back toward the house and the dirt road out of the glen. One of Buzzy’s original cast intercepted us. His pupils were dilated to the size of black dimes.

  “Hey, Will … hey, far out, man … Frodo’s back…”

  “We’re just leaving, Mike.”

  “Oh, man … you try the new shit Buzzy’s got? It’s, like, some seriously heavy Mex. Super heavy. It’s laced with something, man, it’s got to be … it’s some heavy shit…”

  “Enjoy it,” I said.

  “You can’t go yet, man. Remember Janie? Janie Duerffler? You remember Janie. She’s upstairs, pulling a train. You ought to go up, man, check it out, say hi. Or, like, say ‘High,’ you know?” He giggled.

  “That was never my thing,” I said, more for Matty’s ears than for Mike’s.

  I remembered Janie all right. She was about fourteen. Maybe fifteen now. Buzzy had pulled her in from the gas station in downtown Pine Grove, where she hung out. She had been in awe of him and his Corvette, a scrawny child pretending to be tough, desperately in need of attention. From that first night, she did whatever Buzzy told her to do, whenever he told her to do it. Everybody thought it was funny.

  Had we moved five minutes sooner, everything would have been all right. But we didn’t.

  We were headed over to let Joey know we were leaving when the screams began. The sound didn’t come from some tripping chick surprised by a snake from the barn. These were real screams, as naked as a blade.

  They came from the house.

  Matty moved before anyone else could dial the right channel. He was bewilderingly fast, slipping through the doorway with the too-quick-for-the-eye smoothness of one of the barn snakes.

  I followed him. As if I had no choice, as if Matty had to be followed. Maybe that was how things were in Vietnam.

  He had already gotten up the stairs before I reached their bottom. Frozen in astonishment, half a dozen stoners sat around the desolate interior, watching a movie unfold.

  Shouting. More screaming. Matty’s voice. Bronc’s.

  The action was in the bedroom reserved as a crash pad, where two vile mattresses lay side by side on the floor. Bronc stood by the bed with his pants around his ankles and his hard-on withering. Bone white and pathetic, Janie cowered against a wall. Her left eye was bruised and swelling.

  “Get him away, get him away,” she begged. “I don’t want him doing it to me.”

  A shotgun leaned in the far corner.

  “Get out,” Matty told Bronc. “Now.”

  “And who the fuck are you?” Bronc said. “Mind your own business. We’re just having a little fun.”

  Bawling her eyes out, Janie cried, “Get him away from me … please, get him away.…”

  Matty lowered his voice. The way a rattlesnake coils. B
ronc didn’t read the signal.

  “Pull up your pants and get out,” Matty said.

  “You want to screw her, get in line. Now beat it, before I throw you down the stairs.”

  Janie tried to cover herself with a sheet trapped beneath her rump. I had never touched her. It truly had not been my thing. And I had been mocked for it, the butt of jokes among Buzzy’s retinue. Now, looking at her, all blotches and protruding bones, it seemed a miracle that she ever attracted anyone. Or that anyone ever wanted sex at all.

  Conditioned by useful violence, Bronc dove for the shotgun. Pants still around his ankles, he twisted around on the floor and brought the double barrels up at Matty.

  Janie shrieked.

  Matty knocked the twin muzzles aside. A massive blast tore the ceiling, pulling down chunks of plaster and drawing billows of dust. Before Bronc could realign the gun, Matty tore it out of his hands and landed, knees down, on top of him.

  He began punching Bronc in the face. With stunning force. Blood burst from human meat, spattering the wall. Janie screamed as if scalded.

  Even in that tumult, Matty punched only with his right hand, his picking hand, while holding Bronc down with his left—the hand that really mattered to a guitarist.

  Bronc stopped cursing or trying to fight back. Matty had pulped his face. It flashed through my mind that he was going to kill him.

  “Matty! Matty! Jesus Christ. Stop, man. Stop it!”

  Matty put a big fist into Bronc’s mouth with such force that I expected it to go down his throat.

  I broke out of my physical trance and stumbled across the mattresses, grabbing Matty by the shoulder.

  He came up at me. His eyes were mad. He braked his fist just inches from my face. Dust swirled like the smoke of battle.

  Matty grunted, then gasped. I recalled how, on that first night, he had put me in mind of a Minotaur.

  He pushed me aside. Not too hard, but firmly enough to make it clear I had better get out of the way.

  In the corner, Bronc mewed and wept.

  “Put your clothes on,” Matty told the girl. Without looking at her. “Get out of here.”

  She listened, moved, hurried.

  Matty picked up the shotgun. Putting his right foot on Bronc’s chest to level him out, he thrust the barrels into the bloody crevice that had been a mouth.

  “You want to play with guns?” he asked Bronc.

  His finger was taut on the trigger.

  “Do you?”

  Weeping, Bronc shook his head as best he could. His shrunken dick shot piss.

  “I can’t hear you,” Matty said. “I asked you if you want to play with guns?”

  Things had plunged beyond justice to a level of brutality, of rapturous cruelty, I had never witnessed in any coal-town fight. Matty jammed the barrels deeper into the broken mouth, making it impossible for Bronc to answer him. The room stank of cordite and rancid sex. Bronc’s piss trickled to nothing. The old dust from the ceiling slowly thinned.

  The air went out of Matty. His posture softened. He tossed the shotgun on the bed and lifted his foot off Bronc’s chest.

  “You’re a lucky man,” Matty told him. “Next time, you listen when you hear the word no.” He gave Bronc a tap with his foot that was almost friendly, then turned to me and shrugged.

  “Let’s get out of this pit,” he said.

  We left Bronc sobbing, soaked with blood and piss.

  Buzzy waited at the foot of the stairs. Matty tensed again. I thought he would pin Buzzy against the wall. Instead, he just tried to brush past.

  “It was just a misunderstanding, man,” Buzzy told him, taking him by the arm. “Janie gets funny sometimes. It wasn’t anything. Really.”

  “That was rape.”

  Buzzy grinned, beaver-toothed, still clutching Matty’s bicep. “You can’t rape Janie, man. I mean, she’s screwed half the county. And probably most of her relatives.”

  Matty broke his nose.

  As we emerged from the house, I saw Joey trot for his car. The bastard was going to abandon us. To protect his goddamned Mustang. Or just his own ass.

  The music had stopped, but the generator throbbed on. The tribes had gathered in front of the house. Digging on the excitement.

  “What a trip, man,” Mike the Minion said. “Anybody dead?”

  “Come on,” I said to Matty. “Let’s just go.” I wanted to take him by the arm, but I was afraid to touch him. His soul was someplace else. No longer crazed, his eyes just looked exhausted.

  Before we could push through the mob, a mad growl rose behind us.

  Matty turned. Fast.

  Bronc had managed to get up off the floor and make it down the stairs. He stood in the doorway. Holding the shotgun.

  His face was a Halloween mask slathered with ketchup. One eye had already swollen shut, but the other gave him enough visibility to identify us. He lifted the twin muzzles toward Matty and stepped out into the yard.

  He wanted to speak, to gloat at last. But his broken mouth wouldn’t let him.

  Amid gasps and a few brief screams, everyone else moved back. I knew that I should try to intercede, to step between Bronc and Matty. But I was afraid.

  Edging back, I said, “Don’t do it, Bronc. Don’t do it, man. It’s murder, it isn’t worth it.”

  Bronc made an animal noise. He wasn’t going to take his eyes off Matty for an instant.

  Buzzy came out, holding a filthy dishrag to his nose with one hand and the deer rifle in the other.

  “Shoot the sonofabitch,” he told Bronc.

  Bronc raised the shotgun another inch, finger on the trigger. But he hesitated. Buzzy contented himself with carrying the rifle but made no move to use it. Never one to do his own dirty work, he just stepped up beside Bronc.

  “Blow his dick off,” Buzzy ordered.

  Joey hadn’t driven off, after all. He sidled up to Buzzy and Bronc with a friendly Joey smile upon his face. I didn’t know if he meant to make peace or simply to switch sides.

  I misjudged him. As soon as he got in position, Joey produced a snub-nosed revolver and rammed it up under Buzzy’s chin. So hard that it cocked Buzzy’s head back.

  “Drop the rifle,” Joey said. “And tell Jesse James he better put down the shotgun.”

  Bronc glanced back over his shoulder. It was all the time Matty needed.

  The shotgun went off again. A girl screamed, folding up and falling, shot in the foot. Before she hit the ground, Bronc went down himself. In possession of the shotgun again, Matty smashed the butt into Bronc’s jaw. Bronc should have been dead, but he was tough meat.

  He was finished, though.

  Matty collected the deer rifle from the ground at Buzzy’s feet.

  “Let him go,” he told Joey. “He’s a coward.” He took the two weapons, crossed the yard, and dropped them down the old well. No one got in his way.

  We drove back down the road on golden leaves.

  “I guess the party wasn’t a good idea,” Joey said.

  NINE

  The hoagie’s remains were soggy from sitting in the fridge. I ate alone, in silence. After I finished, I stayed at the kitchen table, staring at the swirls in the Formica. When the phone rang, I leapt up, hoping it was Laura at the Trailways terminal.

  My mother’s voice was no substitute.

  The conversation was muddled at first, which told me the call was serious. On mundane matters, my mother came straight to the point. Now I sensed her struggling against dignity grown frail.

  At last, she said, “Will, this is difficult for me. I’ve made mistakes … since your father died. I won’t make any excuses. But it’s going to be different now.”

  For my mother, this amounted to emotional nudity. Yet she sounded sober. Serious, but not maudlin. My mother was not into maudlin.

  My anger remained. It made me reluctant to speak.

  “I thought,” she continued, “that you might come home for dinner on Wednesday. I’ll make a roast. We could talk things ove
r.”

  “The band has a job on Wednesday. In Wilkes-Barre.”

  “Are you free on Thursday?”

  “Mom … listen…”

  “I just feel that we should talk. Try not to hold too much against me.”

  “It’s not that. That wasn’t what I meant. I was just going to ask if I could bring someone along.”

  “Not that woman? The one who—”

  “No. Not her. Someone else.”

  “Do I know this girl?”

  “No.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Laura. Laura Saunders.”

  “She’s not a Pottsville girl.”

  “No.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “She goes to the Penn State campus. Down in Haven.”

  The eternal Swarthmore grad, my mother hesitated. Confronted with the equivalent of a Negro foundling on the doorstep.

  “She’s very intelligent,” I said. “You and she can talk about Flaubert.”

  “Why would we want to talk about Flaubert? Was that meant to be sarcastic? Do you know her family? How long have you known her?”

  I counted. “Five weeks. A little more.”

  “That’s not very long.”

  “We’re not at the altar yet. And, really, she chews with her mouth closed.”

  “Don’t be smart.”

  “Don’t give me the third degree, then.”

  “Are you serious about this girl?”

  “I like her.”

  “That’s evident. I just thought … perhaps you and I should sit down together and have a conversation. About our family situation. To clear the air.”

  “I thought it might be good to have her there,” I said. “As a referee.”

  “That’s unfair of you.”

  “I meant we’d both have to be on our best behavior.”

  “I’ve stopped drinking, if that’s what you mean. There. Does it make you happy to hear me say that? All right, bring her. If it means so much to you.”