“What’s the matter?” David asked.
“Nothing.”
“Where’s he taking you tonight? To that thing at the Country Club?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I’ll stop by later and case the joint.”
“Okay, Davy,” she said.
They went back into the living room to join the others. David watched Kate talk to Wood, her loved face printing upon its surface her kindness and lightness, how she couldn’t ever lie, not even to Wood about her concern. It occurred to him that none of the Whipples were liars, with the possible exception of himself. With the perfect, exact, absolute exception of himself. For one thing, Letty thought him more real, more possible, than he was. He was struck again by Letty’s likeness to Kate, and as he watched Kate it was as though he had lied to her, been in some way dishonorable to her. She was so open and delicate. He thought of a flower, perhaps a daisy; only an organism as pure and mute as a flower could have Kate’s symmetry and perfection. She was dressed up to go to the dance, and even in the nylons and heels, the make-up, the dress fashioned to fit over a grown woman’s breasts and hips, Kate carried herself so lightly she managed to look as fit as a lovely child.
That evening when Wood took his new print to his room he found an unmarked envelope under his door. In the envelope were two ten-dollar bills and a five-dollar bill. He took the money and the envelope and put them on his desk. A present? But who would give him money like that? Twenty-five dollars. Then he knew; it was the twenty-five dollars Horace had confiscated from the school lockers long ago; now Horace marked that fund paid. Paid in full. Maybe a declaration of independence. He and Horace hadn’t been very close these last years. Horace stayed by himself, and though he was as haunted-looking as ever, he always seemed busy.
Wood was trembling; he wanted peace. Even while the rational part of him considered that old debt, and Horace, and after Horace the rest of the family and their worries, there was a call from his darkness, a scream of helplessness. He took two translucent capsules from an olive-colored box, a bottle from his desk drawer, and washed the capsules down with raw whiskey. Once that would have made him gag, once upon a more innocent time. Now there seemed to be so little power in whiskey or drugs. But there was some power, thank God. He would have no more than an hour to kill before he could sleep.
Duty said he should go knock on Horace’s door and find out in what spirit Horace had paid back the money. Why was there no message with it?
On his desk beside the money was a paragraph he had recently copied into his notebook:
The entire population of Japan is a proper military target…THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN. We are making War and making it in the all-out fashion which saves American lives, shortens the agony which War is and seeks to bring about an enduring Peace. We intend to seek out and destroy the enemy wherever he or she is, in the greatest possible numbers, in the shortest possible time.
—Col. Harry F. Cunningham, A-2,
Fifth Air Force. Fifth Air Force
Intelligence Review, No. 86,
15-21 July, 1945
These little jewels he saved. They seemed to help his case, as though each document proved him just a little innocent. But wasn’t he the prosecutor? Was it not someone else’s trial, and he only the lawyer’s clerk?
Fifty-five minutes, approximately.
He forced himself to go to Horace’s room. Horace wasn’t there. That took four minutes, what with knocking, waiting and finally opening the door, turning on the light and finding the room empty. Slowly and methodically he went to the bathroom and washed, brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. He took one more drink from the bottle of whiskey, and this time the acid shock of whiskey and toothpaste did almost make him gag. Good. He got into bed and looked at the one foot pushing up the blankets. Good. He felt the smooth depression where he once had an eye. When he tapped it, it made a hollow sound, like a loose drum. The whiskey, he had been warned, increased the effect of the barbituate, and he had found that approximately two ounces, or two swallows, was the right amount if he hadn’t eaten much for supper. Beyond these dosages lay another world where he tossed without control, in the power of the drugs. Once in desperation he had taken himself by the throat and tried to kill the mind that had entertained the fantasies of that world. Now he was more careful.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have got into bed quite so soon. He turned out the light, then quickly turned it on again, because its absence revealed the room with the mustard walls, the wooden guard tower beyond those cold, borrowed windows. This time an operating table stood in the center of the room. He had seen too much. A slender woman lay strapped to the table, her knees spread and her feet tied into stirrups. She was naked, and now his face dollied in, his face and his eyes, looking, seeing everything. Her external genitalia had been closely shaved, and were covered with the reddish scrapes of the razor. The pores stood out upon the scraped pudenda, and the flesh looked tough, like something much handled, although it hadn’t been. He tried to avoid looking at her face because he knew who she was.
The clipboard said: Zeugungs versuchsstelle: 1-004-065 (m). There was no question as to the inevitability of the operation, which would be performed without anesthesia, an interesting problem (it was written) in the traumatic effects of such pain; the next experiment (Versuch), scheduled for 1400 hours, would be upon a patient of the same approximate age and in the same approximate health. In this case spinal anesthesia would be used. What the clipboard promised would be done.
“Wood?” she said. It was Lois, as he had known. “Wood?” Her face was sick and pale. Her black hair, so dirty it was the color of slate, fell thinly to the gray paper. Canvas straps cut across her chest.
“Wood, I’ve changed my mind. I think I’d rather die.”
“It’s too late now.”
“What are they going to do to me?”
Of course he knew. “Just a little operation,” he said.
“Wood, I’m cold. My nose itches.”
“My arms are tied,” he said. “What can I do?”
“Remember when I played the duke? Remember my costume? You were the king. You were always my king.”
“I’m only a prisoner!” he shouted. “Don’t ask me to do anything! You should have died! You made the wrong choice and I can’t help it!”
“Oh, Wood,” she said softly, “don’t cry, my dear. I’m so happy to be a woman.” She listened, and seemed to be remembering.
Soon the experiment would begin, and he would hear her first long unbelieving call. His eyes were forced to the schedule on the clipboard. Heben: ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, vagina, labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, fourchette, fossa navicularis, vestibule, vestibular bulb, Skene’s tubules, glands of Bartholin, hymen, vaginal introitus. Extend meatus urinarius beyond perineum.
Why had he studied their work?
“Can’t you kill me, Wood, before they come?”
He fell from the bed and crawled to the corner where his shotgun stood, but it wasn’t there. He propped himself upon his stump, and his arms scythed that corner, but never found the cold gun. His box of shells was gone from the shelf. All right, he coldly thought, you have tried to disarm me. My visions are precise and even scientific; agony is considered an incidental phenomenon, below all but perhaps the mildest curiosity of the state. He stumbled and hopped to his desk and gobbled all the rest of the translucent capsules. If he drank too much whiskey with them he might vomit them up (auswerfen), so he did not.
At ten o’clock that evening Horace walked down Bank Street, past the windowlights of houses, past the dark high school. Today had been the first Friday that Susie hadn’t been up to greet him when he came for the rents. Sam Davis had let him in, Sam Davis so drunk he drooled as he grinned, and when Sam stepped back he shoved the kitchen table so far, the electric toaster came to the end of its cord and fell to the floor. An old piece of dried toast was still in the toaster, and this struck Horace with ominous meaning, as thou
gh life had somehow ended with that small forgetting. He must get Susie out of there and away, and now, this evening, he had begun. He had six hundred dollars in traveler’s checks in a neat little folder with a snap on it, and a hundred dollars in cash. They would take Grimes’ taxi to Wentworth Junction and take the midnight train south. If he couldn’t get her to leave tonight they would leave tomorrow; he was ready now. There were no more Herpes, and Zoster had faded, disappeared, gone away without leaving a memory of cellar stench. Below his window he’d found, long ago, a ball of mouse fur, the last sign of Leverah. He was a man now. He knew the ball of mouse fur had been passed by a cat, probably Tom. He knew what had been in his imagination and what had not, and in his singular clarity of mind he made this new decision with no trepidation whatsoever. He had saved the seven hundred dollars out of his salary—it had taken less than a year. He would get a job, and maybe Susie would get a job when she felt better, and there would be no cheap laughter any more. She was only four years older than he was. If she couldn’t do without sex, she could show him what she liked and he could do it to her. They would be married. But first he must get her away from Leah, from this terrible place. How many times had he heard them joke about her. They said she “ate the bird,” and he didn’t know what that meant. The lowest, filthiest men in town had the right to print her with the word “Fuck,” then laugh with expressions like they had to go to the bathroom. It was Leah, this terrible place that wouldn’t let you go, that remembered everything bad. They would change their names; they would never think of Leah again. They would start new, with no memories, just their own kindness.
In the square the grown people seemed furtive. Some high-school-age kids hollered and lounged on the steps of the Town Hall, flicking cigarettes ten feet across the sidewalk to the gutter, watching for girls and women so they could act their smut out upon their faces. Cruelty was everywhere. In Trask’s the bright lights proclaimed those thoughts official, as though the people were on the stage. In the Strand they all sat close as a pinch or a goose in the dark, watching the murder they had paid to see. The mills and factories were closed for the night, the pale steel gears waiting to mesh.
Water Street smelled of cinders and coal and the ancient fumes of locomotives. Futzie’s Tavern door opened like a mouth to let a shadow in as a bad breath of smoke and beer seeped out into the street. The mouth of hell with blue neon lips. He would take her out of Leah. The stars closed down upon the town, so close they might have been pinned to a blanket stretched across the tops of the houses. Someone came out of the tenement and quickly walked toward the railroad tracks, keeping in the shadow.
Susie’s door was ajar, so he went straight on in through the empty kitchen. The toaster was still on the floor with the piece of toast sticking half out of it like a dead tongue. He heard a gag, that despairing sound, and ran to Susie’s bedroom. Her light was on, and she lay across her bed. The white balloons of her buttocks gleamed pure and cool; her bathrobe was all up around her waist, and her head hung down on the dark side of her bed.
“Again?” she said, and retched. “Didn’t you get your rocks off? Can’t you see I’m sick? Get out of here! Ugg, ugg!” Liquid splashed, with a metal-bowl sound. “Glaag! Oh, oh!” she said. “Get out!” she sighed in despair. “Oh, oh, oh!” She lost her breath, and heaved. Her hand clutched the spread, and the great pure virginal moons of her shivered and clenched.
She raised her head and looked. “Horace! Oh, my God!” She pulled her bathrobe down, turning as she tried to pull it out from under her. He saw the dark cloud between her legs, dark as a piece of twilight, furred brown as a rabbit pelt.
“I’m sorry, Horace. I’m sick,” she said quickly. “Go out to the kitchen and I’ll be out in a mintue.”
“You’re sick,” he said. “Lie down.” He pressed her back, his hand on her chest. He took the vomit to the bathroom and flushed the thin brownish stuff down the toilet. He found a sponge under the kitchen sink and cleaned up the splashes, then cleaned the basin. With a washcloth damp with cool water he came back and washed the sweat from her face and neck.
“Oh, Christ.” She sighed. “I’m so drunk. I’m stinking drunk. Give me a cigarette.” Her hand waved weakly toward the table. He got her a cigarette and lighted it for her. She took a long drag and immediately heaved, and he caught the cigarette and a string of drool in the washcloth. Her hair was all brown strings pasted to her head.
“Go away, Horace. Go away. Go home.”
“No,” he said. “I’m going to take care of you.”
He went to the bathroom, rinsed out the washcloth with soap and came back to wash the old make-up off the bottom half of her face.
“You’re washing me,” she said. “You’re washing me.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Oh, God, no. I stink.”
“You ought to take a bath, then.”
“I stink all over.”
He went to the bathroom, turned on the tub faucets and waited for the water to warm, then went back to her.
“The tub’s filling,” he said. “Come on.”
When she closed her eyes, the brown hollows under them made him melt with tenderness. He touched those soft places. She opened her eyes and looked at him almost with horror. “What are you doing?”
“I just touched your eyes.”
“Horace, what are you doing here?”
“From now on I’m going to be taking care of you.”
“I don’t understand you. I’ve never made you happy.”
Something odd happened to her mouth, as though it weren’t her moving it. “You’ve always made me happy,” he said.
“I’ve made everybody else happy. I’ve made everybody happy but you.”
“Come on. The tub’s filling. It’ll run over.”
“I’ve got this thing makes them happy.” She laughed, and retched, but not so badly as before.
“Come on.” He took her by the arms and stood her up. She began to fall back, so he put his arm around her and began to walk her down the hall.
A door banged open behind them and Sam Davis came staggering out in his long underwear. The wrists, neck and fly of the underwear were all worn brown. He stopped, his pinkish eyes bugging out.
“Jesus Baldheaded Christ!” he yelled. “What the shit are you doing?”
Susie’s head lay on Horace’s shoulder, her bare feet dragging on the floor.
“Never mind,” Horace said. The bathtub would run over if he didn’t get there soon, but now Sam Davis ran around in front of them and blocked the way, his brown crotch sagging like a diaper and his scrawny arms braced against the wallpaper.
“I’ve got a right to know!” he yelled. One hand slid down the wall and he nearly followed it to the floor.
“Get out of our way,” Horace said. When Sam didn’t, he walked over him, and Sam fell down like several sticks.
“Christ, you didn’t have to do that,” Sam whined from the bathroom door. “You hurt me. I ought to call the cops.”
“Oh, God,” Susie said, and retched.
“Well, Jesus,” Sam said plaintively, “I’m your father and you ain’t got a blessed stitch on under that bathrobe. Jesus, I got a right to think I ought to be told something. Besides, I got to take a leak so bad I can taste it.”
Still holding Susie, Horace bent down and turned off the faucets. “All right,” he said, and walked Susie out to the hall. Sam shut the door, and they heard the splashing. Susie breathed on his neck, the sour smell of her hair and her vomit breath surrounding him. She leaned against him and she seemed to be getting drunker.
“Poor Horace,” she said. “Oh, my, I’m so drunk. I’m such a drunk. I’m a filthy drunk. I’m a filthy old bag, Horace. Horse. I’m a slut. I’m a great piece of ass as the whole town knows I can’t say no to anything that wears pants.”
“Be quiet.”
“I just want everybody to be happy, Horsie-Horse. I never played with your pickle, though, did I? I never played you
r piccolo?”
He would wash away all that, and they would begin again. He would tear down all that—this house—with his bare hands, and all it meant. The wallpaper exuded that rotten slime. It smelled of sweat.
“‘Susie Davis, in a dream, took on the Leah football team.’ Haven’t you ever sang…sung that at a picnic?”
“Be quiet now,” he said.
Sam came out of the bathroom. “I’d still like to know what you got in mind,” he said.
“I’m going to give Susie a bath,” Horace said.
“What? You’re what?”
Horace moved Susie into the bathroom and removed her bathrobe, revealing great, achingly pure expanses of her delicate flesh. He rolled up his sleeves and lowered her into the tub. Sam stood in the door with his face averted, arguing.
“What gives you the right to look at all of her like that? Jesus Christ!”
“I’m going to make her clean again.”
“Jesus, you sure do give funny answers. You’re gitting me all confused.”
Horace soaped her hair, and wrung the suds through it. His rough hands squeezed and rinsed the long brown hair. “Ah,” Susie sighed.
“I’m gonna git me a beer,” Sam said.
Horace soaped her neck and shoulders, then her sandpapery armpits. She leaned forward obligingly, as if in a dream, as he washed her back. He washed her all over, his hands at times seeming to sink deep into forbidden places, quicksand places. Her hard breasts, the pink nipples, her thighs and calves and feet; he washed the deep complications of her sexual place, amazed at his right. Under his ministering fingers passed the button of her anus. He left no part of her unclean.
Sam came back to argue, keeping his face turned so he would catch no glimpse of his daughter.
“You sure got a lot of gall,” Sam ventured.
“I’m taking Susie away,” Horace said. He lifted her out, and she stood leaning against him as he dried her. His shirt and pants were all wet in front.
“Taking Susie away?” Sam looked, this time, and quickly, guiltily looked away. “What d’ you mean, take her away?”
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