Dead Folks

by Jon A. Jackson

  Just as eagerly, Joe leaned into her. His now moistened cock entered her more readily, but once again, when it met resistance, it crumpled and went dead on him.

  Joe was horrified, humiliated. He jumped back, off the bed, and stood there, staring first at his useless penis, then at her sprawled and waiting body. Nothing could be more simple: a beautiful woman, an eager man, two young lovers anxious to enact life's essential act. . . . But it was clear to him that it was no go. He felt almost no sensation in his heretofore ever-ready organ.

  “I can't believe it,” he groaned. He felt frustrated beyond imagining. He had heard of such things. Who hadn't? But it was something that afflicted old men, the slobs, the drunkards . . . not active, lean, virile young men like himself. “What's wrong?” he said, plaintively.

  “You're tired,” Cateyo said, quickly. She came to him, hugged him, pressing her lively breasts into his flat, smoothly muscled chest. “You're exhausted. Don't worry about it.” It killed her to say it, she wanted him so desperately, but she sensed, as a woman, as a nurse, that it was just an unfortunate moment. They would get past this. They need only wait a bit; perhaps later.

  “Let's eat,” she said. “You'll feel better, stronger. You need rest.” She turned back the heavy comforter, peeled back the sheets, and helped him between them.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, his anger and puzzlement making him resistant at first, but then very quickly lapsing into a passive patient mode, readily submitting to her nursing, her comforting. “I'll feel better. Call room service. Get some breakfast up here. Coffee, eggs . . .” He lay back with a groan. He felt wiped out.

  Cateyo went to the bathroom and donned one of the heavy terry cloth robes with the hotel name on it. Then she called room service and ordered. She lay down on the cover, next to Joe, and held him. By the time the food arrived he was unconscious. Ravenous herself, she drew the little serving cart over to the window and sat there to eat both breakfasts. She drank both glasses of orange juice and two cups of coffee while looking out at the mountains. It was very beautiful. She had never in her life stayed in such a fancy place.

  She looked over at the huge bed, where Joe was curled up like a street kid, his black hair peeping over the comforter. He slept like a child. She wondered at all this. She stood in the sunlight by the window and daringly opened her robe. They were on the top floor, or near the top, she knew. She ran her hands over her body. She wanted him.

  What on earth was happening to her? How had she gotten here? She was twenty-six years old, an intelligent, competent nurse, a farm girl from Montana whose mother had died when she was ten. Her father had been a cranky, ultrareligious man who had died a few years after she went away to nursing school, of a heart attack while feeding cattle in the field. She had never understood him very well. Later, she herself had developed religious notions. And then along came Joe. He was a mysterious man found shot and nearly dead on the highway outside Butte. From the first she had realized he was special, even while he lay in a coma for many days. She had thought of him as an avatar, an angel perhaps, someone sent to her by God. He was a new man. A reborn man, a man yanked back from the dead, she'd imagined. For a long time, when he couldn't talk, couldn't tell them who he was, she had called him Paul, a playful name, as in Paul Newman, or like St. Paul. She hadn't meant it all that seriously, but the idea had gripped her for a good long time. Now she knew he wasn't an angel, not an avatar, not some new man sent by God, but it no longer mattered. She knew he was deeply involved in some criminal activity—that had been made clear to her by a police detective who had come out to Butte from Detroit, a Sergeant Mulheisen. They had no particular evidence against Joe, apparently—they hadn't arrested him—but she brushed aside these concerns as irrelevant. She was deeply in love with him. Right now, as she ran her hand over her smooth belly, she wanted him so badly it was painful.

  She looked across the room and tried out a word she had never actually spoken aloud. She didn't say it very loudly, just whispered under her breath: “Fuck.” Then, “Fuck me.” It sounded odd in the still hotel room air. A brutal word, in a way, but somehow essential and vital. She whispered it again. “Fuck me, darling,” she said.

  Then she lay down on the cover next to him, cuddling against him. He didn't stir. She fell asleep for a while and when she woke it was late afternoon. Joe slept on, not even snoring, not noticing when she leaned over and kissed his scratchy cheek. She lay back and pondered what she should do. She should call Montana, call the hospital. They were probably worried sick, wondering what had happened to her and her patient. She wondered if she could tell them how they had been attacked by the woman, Heather, whom she had thought was her new friend. A woman who, from the little she had gleaned from Joe, was apparently a killer sent to track him down. It was not something she could imagine herself explaining, as unbelievable as her once-embraced notion of Joe as the new man, the angel from heaven.

  Lord, she thought, how on earth did I get here? But here she was. She sat up and paced about, restless and anxious. Finally, she went to the bedside telephone and looked through the hotel folder until she learned how to make an outside call. She was waiting for the hospital to answer when Joe's hand reached around her and clamped down on the telephone rest, cutting off the call.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his eyes blinking, but wild. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Joe! You're awake. I . . . I'll order something from room service.”

  “Who were you calling?” he demanded. He looked angry.

  “Nobody,” Cateyo said. “I was calling the hospital. I just didn't want them to worry.”

  “Calling the hospital?” Joe said. He glanced around. It was not late, but the short winter day was already declining. He sat up. Cateyo replaced the phone on its stand.

  Joe thought for a moment, running his hands through his thick black hair, rubbing his bearded face. “All right,” he said, finally. “Go ahead, call them. Tell them you've run away. Say it any way you like. But don't tell them where we are. And don't call from here. You have to go out. Don't use the lobby pay phone. Go down the street. Call that nurse, your boss.”

  “I know,” Cateyo said. “But I'm worried about the house.”

  “What house?”

  “My house. It's winter up there. If the heat goes off, the pipes could freeze.”

  “Figure it out,” Joe said. “Just don't tell them where you are. Say you're in Spokane, if you have to. You're at the . . . “ Suddenly he remembered something. “Tell them you're in Idaho, at the Coeur d'Alene Resort Hotel. When you come back we'll get something to eat.” He lay back and closed his eyes. “Go ahead. Call them. I'm just going to rest a little bit more.”

  By the time she had dressed, Joe seemed asleep again. She found a pay phone a block from the hotel, in a drugstore. It was dark out now, the downtown Christmas decorations glittering on the Salt Lake streets. She thought of getting Joe a present, some little thing, a surprise. Perhaps because of the sex, the failure of it, or just because it was on a shelf near the pay phone, she found herself looking at condoms and lubricant. On an impulse, she bought a plastic container of “personal lubricant.” Perhaps that was all that was needed.

  “I'm in Coeur d'Alene,” Cateyo told her supervisor, Head Nurse Janice Work. It was the most direct and deliberate lie she had ever told, but she went boldly on with it. “We're getting married.”

  “Oh gosh,” Nurse Work exclaimed. “Honey, are you sure? Do you really love him?”

  “Janice, I have never known anything more securely,” Cateyo said. “He's . . . well, he's . . .” She hesitated. She had been on the verge of saying, “He's my god.” But that was wrong. “He's my lover,” she said, a statement no more true than the other. Then she paused, and added, “Am I stupid? Am I crazy? I love him, Janice.”

  “Of course you're crazy.” Janice laughed. “You're crazy as a loon. But you're in love.” She thought about her own life, her husband who worked on the power company lines.
He was out in the cold at that very moment, repairing downed lines from the storm. “Be in love. Do it. But Cateyo, are you sure you're all right? You weren't hurt in the fire?”

  “What fire? What are you talking about? Of course I'm all right.”

  “There was a fire at the cabin, at Mr. Humann's cabin. Didn't you know? Several people were killed. We had the only survivor in here, just for a few minutes, and then they flew him to Salt Lake, to the burn center. The police are looking for you and Mr. Humann. They were afraid you might have been trapped in the fire. That detective from Detroit is back, asking about you and Mr. Humann.”

  Cateyo was stunned. All thoughts of sex and marriage and romance fled from her mind. “I didn't know,” she said. “We didn't know a thing about it. We just left the cabin, it was all right. There wasn't any fire.” She couldn't say anything about Heather, it was too complicated and, anyway, she didn't understand it herself. “Listen, Janice. I'll have to call back. But I'm okay, really I am.” She hung up before Janice could reply.

  Clutching Joe's present, the bottle of lubricant, she hurried along the cold, windy street, her eyes blurring with wind tears that made the Christmas lights blaze. But when she arrived in the room Joe was not there.

  Joe didn't feel whole, but he felt a lot better. He thought about the debacle of the bed. He hadn't had sex in . . . well, he wasn't sure how long. He ought to have been randy as a goat, but what had happened? Still, she had certainly brought him off before, with her hand, and he'd had plenty of erections. Was it just that Cateyo was a virgin? Was that it? He didn't believe it. And now the image of Helen crept into his mind.

  Helen! Somehow, he had forgotten Helen. He had never had any problems in bed with Helen. He thought about her slim, hairless body. Something weird there. Plenty weird, really. Where was Helen now, he wondered?

  For that matter, where was Cateyo? He got up. The afternoon light had failed. She was gone. He didn't remember waking and talking to her, barely a half hour before. He dressed in the darkened room and went out.

  He slipped out of the hotel and walked around the town for a while, enjoying the cold air and exercising his legs. It was amazing how weak he felt, but gradually his legs began to work better. There was something wrong with his right leg, but he couldn't figure out what it was. It didn't hurt, it just didn't do what he wanted it to do. But as he pushed along, it worked better, in a new way, than he could have hoped.

  The area around the hotel was open, bare. This made little sense to Joe, but he didn't try to figure it out. Some kind of urban renewal, he decided. He walked along. It was dark. One could no longer see the cliffs and crags to the east of the city, but the streetlights and the house lights seemed to reflect off the Front. He understood then where he was. It was Salt Lake City. The mountains up there would be full of snow and skiers at Snowbird and Alta sitting in the taverns, sipping their après ski drinks and eating dinner. Down here, on the valley floor, there were just the most pleasant and comfortable people on the planet. Some of them were Mormons, but just as many were not. They were middle-class white people, white-bread folks, the median television audience—thinking about Christmas, running out to buy presents. Joe was not a Christmas-type guy. He disliked the lights, the decorations. They seemed false.

  Joe walked away from this, as he thought, and soon entered a street filled with bars. “Filled” didn't seem quite the right word. There were bars, but there didn't seem to be anybody on the street. He was hungry, but he realized that he didn't have any money. He thought a drink would be a nice thing. A hot toddy, perhaps. He needed money, though.

  He hadn't gone very far when two huge young men, much taller and bulkier than Joe by far, with large and dusky blunt faces approached. They looked odd, some kind of massive Hawaiian or Samoan giants, or maybe a mythical race of giants. They angled out, walking slowly, one of them cutting him off from the street so that he imperceptibly found himself herded toward the alley next to a bar. Joe stopped at the mouth of the alley.

  The two men stopped, one of them on either side, a few feet away. Their huge faces were bland. “Dude,” one of them said, “walk over here.” He gestured at the alley. The one nearest him moved even closer and Joe felt something hard.

  Joe went, at first. But a step or two into the alley, he turned and looked down at the gun. Without thinking he snatched the gun from the young man's hand. The thief's jaw dropped open. He stared down at the gun in Joe's hand. He started to reach for the gun, to take it back, but Joe smashed his hand with the barrel. The thief yelled and grabbed his hand in agony. The other man drew a gun, but Joe just shook his head.

  “Give me,” Joe said. The other man handed Joe the gun. Joe waved the two into the darkness of the alley. The thief grimaced and joined his partner against the wall. He was wringing his hand, trying to shake off the pain.

  “I didn't mean nothin’, man,” the other thief said. “Hey, keep the fuckin’ gun.”

  “You didn't mean nothin'?” Joe laughed, a little giddy with excitement; his eyes shone. “Well, thanks for the gun, anyway. Now empty your pockets.”

  “Oh, man,” the second thief said. “I ain't got no money. We was lookin’ for money when you. . . . . All right, all right,” he acquiesced as Joe raised the pistol. It was a .38. A Smith & Wesson. The thief hauled out a wad of bills and handed them to Joe.

  Joe took the bills and shoved them into his pocket without examining them. “What's your name?” he asked the man quietly.

  “My name? Whatchoo wanna know my name for? It's DC.”

  “DC? DC-10? What are you, a jumbo jet? What kind of name is DC? Well, let me guess,” Joe said. “It's Dirty Cuntface, something like that, but nobody wants to be called that, so you go by DC. Right?”

  DC glowered.

  “What are you guys? Indians? Hawaiians? You"—he gestured at the one in pain—"squawk.”

  “We ain't no fuckin’ Indians,” DC said, while Joe took another wad of bills from the injured thief. “You dumb fuck, you in deep shit. We're Tongans. You fuckin’ with a Tongan posse. You dead already.”

  "I'm in trouble?” Joe shook his head, laughing, almost giggling. “What the hell are Tongans? I never heard of Tongans. Are they big around here?"

  “Tongans run this place,” DC said. “You dead.”

  “So who's the head Tonk?” Joe asked. “Who's the Tonk, if I told him you assholes tried to rob me but instead I robbed you, would be most likely to kick your jumbo butts?”

  The two kids just stared at him, mouths hanging open.

  “Okay. I'm not giving these guns back to you, because you'd probably shoot yourselves,” Joe said, “but there must be somebody around here who would want to know if somebody was busting into the business. I'm busting in. Can you figure this out?”

  DC couldn't figure it out. He launched himself at Joe, thumbs poised to take out the eyes. Joe whacked him across the side of his head with the pistol and stumbled aside, none too lithely. DC flopped to the dirty concrete of the alley, his immense carcass almost shaking the ground. He lay there, moaning and weeping. The other Tongan took the opportunity to bolt. Joe let him go. Then he kicked DC in the butt. DC curled into a ball. Joe felt inordinately angry with the hapless robber. He wanted to shoot him, he was so enraged at the ineptness, the stupidity, the futility . . . but then he abruptly cooled and felt calm.

  Joe leaned against the brick wall of the building. It was cold and rough under his hand. He breathed heavily, staring down at the abject DC. “Well, who is it?” he asked. “Who the hell runs things around here?” He prodded the kid with his foot.

  The kid flinched, but then, in a muffled voice, he said, “Cap'n . . . Cap'n Lite.”

  Joe stepped back. “What is this?” He gestured at the brick wall. “A bar?” When the kid said yes, Joe told him, “Go see Cap'n Lite. Tell him . . . ah.” He racked his brain for something suitably stupid. “Tell him Bongo Billy is waiting for him in the bar. Go on.” He kicked the boy in the ass. “Get going.”

&n
bsp; DC scrambled up and jogged ponderously down the alley. Joe went out onto the street, then walked into the bar. There was some kind of music playing. A jukebox, he thought, peering into the gloom. There were people sitting at tables, men and women. They were black people and a few giants—Tongans? Some turned to look at him, but not with much interest. The music was very loud. Everybody seemed remarkably spaced out. There wasn't a bartender, or a barmaid. Perhaps it wasn't a real bar. He hadn't noticed a sign. It was more like a store, or a meeting room, perhaps. There was a glass-fronted counter or display case along one wall, but there was nothing on the counter or on display in the case, except for a few empty candy bar cartons—the Oh Henry! bars were gone. People sat about at tables, on folding chairs. They had bottles, some of them in paper sacks. Joe stood at the counter until a woman, a thick, sturdy woman with an islander's face, got up and came to the counter.

  “I want something to drink,” Joe said.

  “What?” she said. “I got Mad Dog.”

  “Okay, give me that.” He peeled off a ten-dollar bill from one of the rolls he'd taken from DC. She handed him the fortified wine, a pint of it in a paper bag.

  Joe sat down at an empty table. He opened the wine and drank. It burned all the way down, but it made him feel warm and good. His eyes glittered. People turned to look at him, but then they looked away. They looked back to the end of the room, to a low platform on which there was a piano. It was being played by a very strange black man. There was a fancy well-lit jukebox, as well, but the music was coming from the bizarre piano player, whose fantastic fingers filled the room with sound.

  Joe took a jolt of the wine and leaned forward. It was just a single man on the little stage, playing an upright piano that wasn't in great shape, but putting out an incredible amount of sound The piano player was strikingly thin, wearing a spangled jumpsuit. He had one of those topiary haircuts, a kind of spirally flame-shaped hairdo that ran straight up into the sky, resembling certain kinds of decorative light bulbs. He was like a spider monkey, or it may have been a tree frog. His fingers were long and spatulate. He wasn't seated—the piano stool had toppled over—but he was dancing and leaping while he played, his ornate cowboy boots flashing brass toes.