by David Goodis
Jones Jarvis did not indicate whether he was buying it or doubting it or wondering how to take it. It seemed that Jones was thinking about something else. Now his eyes were aimed past Whitey, like lenses fixed for a wider-range focus.
Finally Jones shook his head very slowly and said, “I feel sorry for the Captain.”
“If he ever gets hold of me,” Whitey said, “I’ll feel damn sorry for myself.”
“He’s really got his hands full,” Jones said.
Whitey shrugged. “I don’t care what he’s got in his hands. Just so long as it ain’t me.”
But Jones was thinking above that and far beyond that. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood a good many years,” he said. “It’s always been exactly what they call it, a hellhole. But lately it’s been worse than that. Like a furnace that can’t hold the fire and all the flames are shooting out. It puts a certain smell in the air. Sometimes I walk outside at night and I can smell it. The smell of men hating each other. The rotten stink of race riot.”
Whitey was only half listening. He was concentrating on the necessity of remaining hidden from the law. He wondered whether the old man would allow him to stay here for a day or two.
But the old man was thinking about the race riots and saying, “It’s a pity. It’s a terrible pity. I wonder what started it.”
Whitey looked around at the four walls of the small wooden shack. The boards were loose and splintered and in places the wood was decaying. But somehow the walls seemed very secure and there was the comfortable feeling of safety. It was nice to sit here on the cot with the four walls around him and he hoped he’d be permitted to stay for a while.
Then he heard the old man saying, “What do you think started it?”
He looked at the old man. “Started what?”
“These riots. These race riots.”
“Damned if I know,” Whitey said without interest. And then, shrugging, “Anyway, it don’t concern me.”
“No?”
“Why should it? I got no ax to grind.”
Jones Jarvis took off the rimless spectacles. His naked eyes, narrowed and glinting, drilled into the face of the small white-haired man and he said, “You sure?”
“Absolutely,” Whitey answered. It was an emphatic word and he tried to say it with emphasis. But it didn’t come out that way. It came out rather weakly.
He heard the old man saying, “Every man has an ax to grind. Whether he knows it or not.”
Whitey didn’t say anything.
“I’ve been on this earth a long time,” Jones Jarvis said. “I’m eighty-six. That makes me too old to grind the ax. But the Lord knows I did it when I was younger. Did it with all the strength in my body. And don’t think I wasn’t scared when I did it. So scared I wanted to turn and run and hide in the woods. Much safer that way. Much healthier. But there’s some things more important to a man than his health. So I stayed there and saw them coming to grab me and I didn’t move and when they got in real close I looked them straight in the eye. I talked back to them and said I hadn’t touched that white girl and I gave them the facts to prove it. They moved in closer and I pulled the blade from my pocket and showed it to them. And I told them to come on, come on, come and get me. They stood there and saw that blade in my hand. Then one of them said, ‘You swear to it, Jones? You swear you didn’t do it? On your mother’s life?’ I looked at this man who had the rope in his hand all ready for me and I said, ‘How’d you like to kiss my black ass?’ So then all they did was turn and walk away. I waited until they were gone, then made for the woods, and later that day I hopped a freight going north. But it wasn’t no scared weasel running away. It was a man. It was a man going on a trip.”
Whitey was looking at the floor. He was frowning slightly and his mouth scarcely moved as he said, “All right, you’ve made your point. You’re a man. And I’m just a scared weasel.”
“You really believe that? You want it that way?”
“Sure,” Whitey said. He looked up. “Sure. Why not?” Again it sounded weak and he told himself he didn’t care how weak it sounded. He put a very weak grin on his lips and he said loosely and lazily, “I lost my spinal column a good many years ago. There ain’t no surgery can put it back. Even if there was, I wouldn’t want it. I like it better this way. More comfortable.”
“No,” Jones said. “You’re telling a fib and you know it.”
Whitey widened the grin. He said joshingly, “How can you tell?”
“Never mind,” Jones said. “I can tell, that’s all. It shows.”
“What shows?” The grin began to fade. He pointed to his shaggy mop of prematurely white hair. “This?”
“That’s part of it,” Jones murmured. “And your eyes. And the way your mouth sets. And something else.” He leaned forward and let the pause come in and drift for a long moment, and then he said, “Your voice.”
“Huh?”
“Your voice,” Jones said. “The way you can’t talk above a whisper. As if you got a rupture in your throat. As if it’s all torn apart in there.”
Again Whitey looked at the floor. The grin was gone now and he didn’t know what was on his face. He opened his mouth to say something and he tried to get the sound past his lips and nothing came out.
“Or maybe it ain’t the throat,” the old man said. “Maybe it’s the heart.”
“It’s the throat,” Whitey said.
“Maybe it’s both.”
Whitey lowered his head and put his hand to his eyes and pressed hard. He was trying to deepen the blackness of the dark screen that ought to be very black because it was only his closed eyelids, but something was projected on it and he was forced to look and see. It was a memory he didn’t want to see and his hand pressed harder against his closed eyes. On the screen it showed clearly and vividly, and he thought: Now, that’s queer, it oughta be foggy. After all, it’s an old-time film, it’s seven years old.
He heard Jones Jarvis saying, “I’m prone to think that maybe it’s both. Ruined throat. Broken heart.”
“Let it ride,” Whitey mumbled. He still had his hand pressed hard to his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, let it ride.”
“Eugene Lindell,” the old man said.
“No.”
“Eugene Lindell.”
“No. Don’t—”
“Eugene Lindell.” And then the loud crisp sound of snapping fingers. And the old man saying, “Now I get it. It’s been coming slowly and now it’s really hit me and I got it. Eugene Lindell.”
“Please don’t.”
But the old man had it started. And he had to go on with it. And he said aloud to himself, “First time I heard that name I was listening to the radio. The announcer said, ‘And now the lad with the million-dollar voice. Here he is, folks, Gene Lindell, singing—’ ”
“Stop it,” Whitey choked.
“Singing—”
“Will you stop it?”
“Singing from ’way up high on the moon and ’way down deep in the sea. High and low and high again, and it was a voice that made you high when you heard it, happy high and sad high, and you hadda close your eyes, you didn’t wanna see a goddamn thing, just sit there and listen to that singing. You knew you’d never heard a voice like that in all your born days. And then them bobby-soxers started yelling and screaming and you felt like doing the same. That voice did things to you, went into you so deep it made you get the feeling you hadda come out of yourself and fly up and away from where your feet were planted. So next day I walked into a music store and all the loot I’d saved that week was shoved across the counter. ‘Gene Lindell,’ I said. ‘Gimme his records.’ The clerk said, ‘Sorry, mister. We’re sold out.’ A few days later I tried again, and this time he had just one in stock. I took it home and played it and played it, and for weeks I went on playing that record and the jitterbugs would come in and forget to chew their bubble gum, only thing they could do was stand there with their mouths open and get hit between the eyes with that voice. They’d fo
rget to move their feet. They were jitterbugs but they couldn’t jitter because that voice took hold of them and paralyzed them. That was what it did. It was that kind of voice.”
Whitey was sitting bent very low on the edge of the cot. He had both hands covering his face. It seemed he was trying to shut himself away from the living world.
But he could hear the old man saying, “You had it, Gene. You really had it.”
He took his hands away from his face. He looked at the old man and smiled pleadingly, pathetically. His cracked-whisper voice was scarcely audible. “Why don’t you stop it? What do you want from me?”
“Just a simple answer,” Jones Jarvis said. He had leaned back and now he leaned forward again. “Tell me,” he said. “How did you lose it? What happened to you?”
The smile widened and stiffened and then he had it aimed past the old man, his eyes glazed and fixed on nothing in particular. It all added up to a sort of crazy grimace.
“Won’t you tell me?” the old man asked very softly and gently. And then, plaintively, “I think I got a right to know. After all, I was one of your fans.”
Whitey sat there and tried to look at the old man. But he couldn’t look. And he couldn’t get the grimace off his face. He was trying very hard but he couldn’t do anything but just sit there and stare at nothing.
Jones watched him for some moments. Then Jones’s expression became clinical and he said, “Maybe you could use a drink.”
Whitey tried to nod. But he couldn’t move his head. It felt very heavy and sort of crushed, as though steel clamps were attached to his temples and pressing against his brain.
Jones got up from the three-legged stool and moved toward the row of gallon jugs filled with colorless liquid. He picked up a jug, took it to the table, and began pouring the liquid into the half-filled bottle. He poured until the bottle was completely full. Then he put the jug back in its place among the others. He set it down very carefully, moved some of the other jugs to get them exactly in line along the wall, then nodded approvingly like a show-window expert satisfied with the display.
“It’s high-grade merchandise,” Jones said, as though he were talking to a potential customer. But his tone was sort of forced. He was trying to get Whitey’s mind away from Whitey. He made a stiff-armed gesture, pointing to the gallon jugs, and went on: “I manufacture it myself. Know everything that goes in it, and I guarantee it’s a hundred per cent pure, it’s really high-grade. Just alcohol and water, but the way it’s mixed is what gives it the charge. So it ain’t no ordinary shake-up. It’s a first class brand of goathead. Real fine goathead. The finest goddamn goathead ever made in any cellar.”
He glanced at Whitey, hoping for a comment or any reaction at all. But there was nothing. Whitey just sat there with his glazed eyes staring fixedly at empty space, the wide-smile grimace now wider and crazier, ’way out there in left field, very far away from Jones Jarvis and the goathead and everything.
The old man gave it another try. He pointed to a hinged arrangement on the floor that indicated a floor door and he said, “That goes down to the cellar. All day long I’m down there making it, mixing it, tasting it so’s I’ll be sure it’s just right. Sometimes it tastes so good I forget to come upstairs. Wake up a day later and wonder what the hell happened. But never sick. With Jones Jarvis’ goathead it just ain’t possible to get sick. That junk they sell in the stores can make a man sick as hell, he’ll pay two, three, three-and-a-half a pint and wind up paying five to get his stomach pumped out. But that won’t happen when he drinks my brand. No matter how much he drinks, he’ll never get sick. And it sells for only six bits a pint.
“That’s value, man, that’s real value,” he went on, trying very hard to get Whitey’s mind away from Whitey. “Them big whisky people oughta be ashamed of themselves, charging what they do for that stuff they advertise. They give it a fancy name and a fancy label, with pretty pictures in the magazines, a big-shot businessman sitting there in the big fine room with all the books and a couple of high-priced hunting dogs and he’s holding the glass and saying it’s real good whisky and he drinks it and you oughta drink it too. What he should do is come here and buy a bottle of Jones Jarvis’ goathead. He’d never touch that other junk again. He’d—”
Whitey was getting up from the cot. As he lifted himself to his feet, the wide-smile grimace began to fade from his face. His eyes gradually lost the glazed staring-at-nothing look and the stiffness was gone from his lips. It was a slow change and he went through it quietly and calmly, and finally he stood there completely relaxed.
Then he moved toward the door.
“Where you going?” Jones said.
“Out.”
“But where?”
“Station house.”
The old man moved quickly to insert himself between Whitey and the door. “No,” the old man said. “Don’t do that.”
Whitey smiled mildly and politely and waited for the old man to get away from the door.
“Listen,” the old man said. “Listen, Gene—”
“Yes?” he murmured very politely.
“Stay here,” the old man said. “Stay here and have a drink.”
“No, thanks. Thanks very much.”
“Come on, have a drink,” the old man said. He gestured toward the filled bottle on the table. “There it is. Right there. Waiting for you.”
“No,” he said. “But thanks anyway. Thanks a lot.”
“You mean you don’t drink?” the old man asked. His eyes tried to pull Whitey’s eyes away from the door. He was trying to make it a conversation about drinking.
“Yes,” Whitey said. “I drink. I do a lot of drinking. I drink all the time.”
“Sure you do.” Jones Jarvis smiled companionably, as one drinker to another. “Come on, let’s have a shot.”
Whitey smiled back and shook his head very slowly.
“Come on, Gene. It’ll do you good. You know you want a drink.”
“No,” Whitey said, wanting a drink very badly, his mouth and throat and belly begging for the colorless liquid in the bottle on the table just a few steps away.
“Just one,” the old man said. He moved quickly to the table, pulled the cap off the bottle, and brought the bottle to Whitey. “I want you to taste this goathead.”
“No,” Whitey said. He was looking past the old man, at the door. “I’m going back to the station house.”
The old man stood there between Whitey and the door. For some moments he looked at Whitey’s face. Then he looked down at the bottle of goathead. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a quick swallow. As it went down and burned and hit like a blockbuster hitting the target, his body vibrated and his old man’s head snapped forward and back and forward again. “Goddamn,” he said, speaking to the bottle. “You’re bad, man. You’re a bad sonofabitch.”
Whitey reached past the old man and put his hand on the doorknob.
“Don’t,” the old man said. His hand came down very gently on Whitey’s arm. “Please, Gene. Please don’t.”
“Why not?” He kept his hand closed on the doorknob. He was looking at the door and saying, “What else is there to do?”
“Stay here.”
“And wait for them to find me?” He smiled sadly, resignedly. “They’re gonna find me sooner or later.”
“Not if you hide. Not if you wait for a chance to run.”
“They’d get me anyway,” he said. “They’re bound to get me, no matter what I do. When they’re looking for a cop-killer, they never stop looking.”
“But you’re not a cop-killer,” Jones said. His hand tightened on Whitey’s arm. “Use your brains, man. Don’t let yourself go haywire. You know you didn’t do it. You gotta remember you didn’t do it. If you go back to that station house, it’s just like signing a confession. Like walking into the butcher shop and putting yourself on the meat block.”
The sadness went out of the smile and it became a dry grin. Whitey was thinking of the Captain. In hi
s mind he saw the Captain attired in a bloodstained butcher’s apron. He saw the cleaver raised and coming down, but somehow he didn’t care, maybe it was all for the best. What the hell, he should have been out of it a long time ago. No use continuing the masquerade. He said to himself: The truth is, buddy, you really don’t give a damn, you’d just as soon be out of it.
He heard Jones Jarvis saying, “Or maybe you just don’t care.”
Whitey winced. He looked at the old man’s topaz eyes, peering inside his brain.
Jones said, “You gotta care. You gotta drill it into yourself you got something to live for.”
“Like what?” he asked in the cracked whisper that always reminded him it was a matter of no hope, no soap, nothing at all.
But the old man was still in there trying. And saying, “Like looking for an answer. No matter what the question is, there’s always an answer.”
“Sure,” he agreed, grinning again. “In this case, it’s strictly zero.”
“It’s never zero,” the old man said. “Not while you’re able to breathe.”
“I’m tired of breathing.” As he said it, it sounded funny to him, and he widened the grin.
“It’s a goddamn shame,” the old man said. He loosened his grip on Whitey’s arm. He looked down at the bottle in his hand, then gazed down past the bottle to focus on the splintered shabby boards of the floor. He spoke to the floor, saying, “My fault. It’s all my fault. I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut. I couldn’t leave it where it was, with him sitting there on the cot, man named Whitey just sitting there cooling himself and getting comfortable. I hadda open up my goddamn mouth and talk about Gene Lindell, the singer.”
Whitey held onto the grin. “Don’t let it bother you, Jones.”
Jones went on talking to the floor. It was as though Whitey had already walked out of the shack. “Now he’s going back to that station house and the Captain’ll tear him to shreds. Really go to work on him, that’s for sure. And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”
