Dem

by William Melvin Kelley

  “No, for serious. In the South Pacific. It’s real. Next light I’ll unhook it. You can see for yourself.”

  They stopped at Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street, a dismal corner. The driver unhooked the head—it had hung by its braided red hair—and thrust it into Mitchell’s reluctant hands. They cradled the head as they would have a piece of dry ice. The skin was more like hard leather, rain-soaked shoes dried under a radiator. The mouth was sewn with wrapping twine. Mitchell wondered what he would find if he pried up the eyelids.

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “Head-hunters. We was mopping up Japs and took this small island, which they was living on. We was stuck with this bastard of a captain, who’d been on my ass and everybody else’s too since Basic, right? So when we got to this island, he decided he’d start a little slave-labor force with the natives. So, anyway, we found a couple Japs on the island and had us a little skirmish there and in the middle of it, I discover my dear old captain right in front of me. So he was such a bastard I decided to put him out of his bastard misery, and lowered my sights a few inches to where his red hair stuck out from under his green helmet. After we wiped out the Japs we went around to pick up our dead, you know, as is only fitting, to give them a decent burial. But we couldn’t find the captain’s remains nowhere.”

  They had turned east, were crossing town now. As a lieutenant in an Asian war, Mitchell had tried never to antagonize any of his men.

  “So anyway, just before we hopped to the next island, this delegation of head-hunters comes up to me and says a lot of mumbo jumbo and stuck this box in my hand. It was an old softball box, you know, sent out by the USO—they’d sent a ball and some gloves.” The driver turned north. “I keep wondering if the head-hunters saw me do it. I look at that red hair and wonder. Wouldn’t that be something if my old captain was riding with me all these years!”

  Mitchell dropped the head onto the front seat. They had just passed the Automat, at Third Avenue and Forty-second Street, and sitting in the window, in a black sweater, had been Nancy Knickerbocker, eating what looked like a bowl of soup.

  “Let me out here!” Mitchell opened the door of the moving cab.

  “Hey! Wait until I pull over. You want me to get a ticket?”

  They stopped at Forty-third Street and Mitchell ran the block, though his leg threatened him. She was still there, quiet over her soup, her pageboy covering her ears and cheeks, her eyes downcast. Mitchell wondered what she was doing in New York, three hundred miles from home.

  7

  NOW THAT HE was standing outside the restaurant, his nose pressed against the glass, he could not decide what to do. He knew Nancy Knickerbocker as well as he knew his wife, but since Nancy did not know him, he was afraid to walk up to her table, introduce himself, and tell her that if she needed anything at all, she could call on him. It was then too that he realized he was still wearing his bedroom slippers. Certainly he could not be wearing bedroom slippers for his first meeting with Nancy Knickerbocker. But he could not go home without knowing where she was staying in New York.

  He entered the restaurant, bought a cup of coffee, and sat where he could keep her under surveillance. She was only three tables from him. It was strange to see her in color. He had always imagined her hair a dark blond; it was closer to platinum. Her lipstick was brighter than he would have thought; in fact, he had always been certain she did not use it. But these things were insignificant. She was as beautiful as ever.

  Finally she stood up—shorter and thinner than television made her—and drowned her cigaret in the half-empty bowl of green soup. Mitchell waited until she had pushed through the revolving door before he followed. She walked north along Third Avenue, stopping now and then at store windows. Each time she did, Mitchell jumped into a doorway. He would stand there, waiting for her to go on, not daring to return the stares of the people who saw him lurking there in bedroom slippers.

  After some blocks she turned east and walked to First Avenue, and entered an old six-story building with a new glass front. He waited protectively until she was safely inside the well-lit lobby, then started home.

  Later that night, when he wrote her address in his small leather address book, he listed her as Nick so that if ever Tam saw it, she would not know who it was, or even that it was a woman.

  8

  NEXT MORNING, Nancy was not in Evansdale. Greg spent the entire night with Crystal, explaining to her that Nancy had gone to Buffalo to nurse her aunt. Mitchell knew better; Nancy was in New York, and he had to know why. Just before leaving the office, he called Tam and told her he had been delayed for a few hours.

  “Do you have a girl, Mitchell?”

  He sighed. “No, Tam.”

  “Then what’re you doing tonight?”

  “I told you. Some work to catch up on.” He imagined her bulk taxing the tiny chair next to the phone table.

  “Like what? You working for the CIA?”

  “Please, Tam. I just want to stay here for a while.”

  “Don’t whine, Mitchell. What time do you think you’ll be home?”

  “Late.”

  “Good.” She hung up.

  He left his office and walked to First Avenue, entering a bar across from where Nancy was staying—The Sons of Erin Tavern. It was an old bar with a large window onto the street. He sat near the window on a wobbly stool and waited for Nancy.

  There were no women in The Sons of Erin; there was nothing soft or comfortable about the place. Everything was brown. The window was filmed with grease and soot. Mitchell traced an “N” on the window and squinted through the clean spot at her building. Then he turned back to the bar and ordered a bourbon and soda.

  The bartender did not leave after serving the drink. “You been in here before?”

  Mitchell wanted no conversations and tried to think of the answer most likely to cut this one short. “Yes.”

  Across the street, the lights in the lobby came on. Through the glass doors, the lobby seemed a stage set, waiting for actors.

  “I thought so. You look like a Rafferty.” He raised his eyebrows and rested his hands on the bar.

  Some seconds later, Mitchell realized the bartender expected an answer. “No, no. I’m not a Rafferty. My name’s…O’Connor.”

  “From the Jim O’Connors up at Seventieth?”

  Perhaps he should have said he had never entered The Sons of Erin; perhaps it would have made no difference.

  “No. I’m from Evansdale. That’s upstate.”

  The bartender paid no attention. “Little Jim O’Connor—a lovely person, but a terrible disappointment in the casket. Cancer it was. He was a little guy at the start and after the Cancer let him go, he was down to fifty-seven pounds. He hadn’t worn street clothes for a year and they had to pad out his blue serge to make him fit it. But then his head looked too small for the rest of him. Brien wandered in with a load on and didn’t even know who’d died and they come over from Cork together. Hardly knew him myself—and I was sober.”

  “You talking about Little Jim?” A man in gray denim work clothes joined them; he had been standing in the shadows at the other end of the bar. “Little Jim. As strong as two elephants before the Cancer commenced to eat at him. But he had it easy, he did. Frank Foley really had it rough.”

  Mitchell wanted to move, but could not. He had to stay near the window. He gulped his drink and ordered another.

  “Foley—what a giant he was! A big man, a full six and one-half feet tall he was, drove a trolley and then a bus. He was up in Harlem when a nigger tried to rob his money-changer. Stabbed him forty-eight times, the nigger did, but Foley hung on, saved his money-changer, and lingered on for the next year and six months until his great Irish heart give out on him. It wasn’t just the stab holes; it was the complications. First his lung collapsed, then his bladder give up and he had to piss through a
tube leading from his stomach to a bottle under his bed. Then because of that bad lung, his heart was working overtime and his feet begun to swell up. Finally he passed into the peaceful arms of the Virgin.”

  The bartender nodded. “Foley. A giant like you say. And Little Jim too. But I never seen anyone die as good as Neil-o Murphy.”

  “Neil-o Murphy. Yes…” The other man sighed. So did Mitchell. The bourbon was taking effect and he began to feel almost Irish himself.

  “And it all started with his walking around barefoot.”

  “How d’you mean?” Mitchell could not help asking.

  “Well, O’Connor, he was walking around barefoot in his own house, mind you, and he picked up a splinter. So you know Neil-o wasn’t about to let no splinter slow him down. He forgets it. Two weeks later—bam!—his foot swoll up like a…But you think Neil-o would go to the doctor? No, sir, he lets it pass and then one day he faints away, right here on First Avenue and they take him over to the hospital and—you guessed it—gangrene! So they cut off his foot, but too late, and had to cut off the leg up to the knee, and then the knee itself. Then somehow it jumped over to the other leg and, well…” He shook his head. “Neil-o Murphy died in pieces. At the end, nothing was left but a head and torso. His coffin was only four feet long. You care to know the time between when he picked up that splinter and the day we each dropped one last rose into his grave?”

  “Yes,” Mitchell answered truthfully.

  “Four years and nine months.” The bartender shook his head as if even he found it an unbelievable length of time. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, could that man die!”

  Mitchell agreed. “He certainly could!”

  9

  AT TEN O’CLOCK, five hours later, they were still talking about their friends, dying or dead. Besides Mitchell and the bartender, nine other men stood at the end of the bar. “Once knew a snakebite victim. He was out hunting and one night a snake crawled into his boot. Try as he might, the undertaker couldn’t ever cover up the black color the venom turned his face. It looked so bad that even his own sweet mother wouldn’t kiss him. She just looked at him and shook her head. ‘That nigger ain’t none of mine!’ ”

  Mitchell blinked the blackened cheeks from his mind and looked across the street for the two-hundredth time. The lobby was a hazy yellow square now, resisting the surrounding darkness. But he had no trouble seeing Nancy Knickerbocker on the sidewalk in front of the house. She was talking to a man.

  Mitchell stood up, tottered, steadied and, through the greasy glass, watched them shouting at one another. He could not hear them, but their backs were bent stiff and they had begun to wave their arms. By now Mitchell recognized the man as Greg Knickerbocker.

  “Snake poison ain’t the worst. Spiders carry the worst poison. Why you ask? Because it’s slower…”

  Greg grabbed his wife’s arms and began to shake her. Mitchell dropped ten dollars on the bar, pushed past the men, and staggered out to the curb. He had entered The Sons of Erin while the sun was still warming the autumn air. Now a brisk wind carried the couple’s words across to him.

  “You’re nothing but a two-bit hooker. You know that? That’s exactly what you are.” Greg was still shaking her.

  She seemed not at all afraid of him. “Eunuch! Let me go!”

  Greg responded by pounding Nancy’s nose with his right fist. A red splotch appeared on her face and spread downward.

  Mitchell began to yell—a war whoop, and limped across the street. He would kill Greg Knickerbocker and end Nancy’s misery for all time. He pounced on the man as soon as he reached the sidewalk, hands gripping at Greg’s throat, fingers digging into the small soft spot at the base of Greg’s neck. He rode Nancy’s husband to the pavement.

  Above him, Nancy was screaming, clutching at his hair, trying to drag him from her husband’s back. Inwardly, Mitchell admired her; after all Greg had done to her, she could still submerge the desire for revenge; her compassion shone as brightly as ever. For an instant, he stopped mauling Greg to gaze up at her—the opportunity Greg needed; he rolled away, scrambled to his feet, and without looking back, disappeared around the corner, heading east.

  Mitchell brushed himself off, concerned now about Nancy’s nose. She must have thought him strange, because she began to back toward the door of her building. Or perhaps Greg had returned. Mitchell looked around; the block was empty. “He’s gone now.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry.”

  “You’re a maniac.” She stared at him. “Do you know you’re crazy?”

  Mitchell was bewildered. Then he realized that Nancy had no idea who he was. His flying out of the night to rescue her must have surprised her. He would have to calm her or lose her forever. Her first impression of him must be a good one.

  He smiled his very best smile, then transformed it to infinite concern. “I think you should see a doctor for your nose.” The blood dripped from her face onto the triangle of silkish white blouse showing at the neck of her trench coat. “Do you have a doctor in the city?”

  She put her hand to her face, and, as if for the first time, realized she was bleeding. She began to cry, half-hurt, half-angry. “That bastard would hit me where it shows!”

  Mitchell was surprised to hear Nancy curse, but supposed she had cause. “Do you have a doctor in New York?” Her physician in Evansdale was Doctor Spaulding, Ginny’s second ex-husband.

  “Sure. Sure.”

  “What’s his address? We’ll take a taxi.”

  Again she looked at him strangely, her expression hard to see behind the blood. Then she sighed, shrugged, and gave him an address in Greenwich Village. “What the hell! I began giving it away a long time ago.”

  10

  IT WAS DIFFICULT for them to stop a taxi until Mitchell gave her a handkerchief to wipe the blood from her face. Her nose was red and swollen. Her lips were puffy. “Where did you come from anyway?” They were headed downtown now.

  “From The Sons of Erin Tavern.” And when she looked puzzled: “It’s a bar across from where you’re staying.”

  She nodded. “So, you’re drunk?”

  “No. I’m a fan of yours.” How could anyone not admire her, he thought, after witnessing what she had endured and the spirit with which she had endured it.

  “You really watch?” She was testing her nose the way a person does fruit, wincing from time to time.

  “I know what you’re going through, yes.”

  “Mister, you have no idea! Every time I say something, he moves, or fidgets, or picks lint off his clothes. What an absolute bastard he is!”

  Mitchell could not understand why she complained about such trivial things when her other problems seemed so much more painful. But then, Tam did small things that he could not stand—forgetting to put a new roll on the spindle when she used the last of the toilet paper, leaving him stranded in the bathroom. He supposed that such things entered into the charge of mental cruelty when the time came to get a divorce. Even so, Greg Knickerbocker was first and foremost an adulterer.

  Nancy’s New York doctor lived in a loft over a bar on lower Broadway. Painters lived in the other lofts. As they climbed a long dirty staircase—his injured leg was beginning to get sore—Mitchell smelled turpentine. The staircase walls were covered with posters and announcements for art shows. The topmost landing, unlike the others, was clean and neatly swept. Painted directly onto the orange door, in six-inch white letters, was the doctor’s name: MENDELBLUM. Nancy knocked.

  “You sure this man is good?” Mitchell whispered, looking at the name.

  “One of the best.”

  “Who?” A woman’s voice came from inside.

  “It’s me, Elsie.”

  “Winky!” The voice named Elsie began to struggle with the door’s many locks and bars. “Winky!” Elsie herself was short, gray-haired, wearing round steel glasses, a pair of striped
railroad engineer’s coveralls, and a woven Mexican serape. She carried a paint brush. She stepped onto the landing, gave Nancy a hug, calling over her shoulder, “Marcus, it’s Winky!” She smiled at Mitchell. “Who’s this?”

  For an instant, Nancy looked puzzled, but recovered quickly. “A friend of mine, Elsie.”

  Mitchell introduced himself. Elsie took his hand and Nancy’s waist and pulled them into the loft.

  “Marcus? Did you hear me?” She shouted upward, sending her voice over the partitions which broke the loft into rooms. The ceiling was at least sixteen feet high; the light did not reach it. Her voice died in the high darkness.

  “All right, Elsie. I’m putting my pants on, if you please.” It was impossible to tell where the doctor was. His voice fell to them from the ceiling.

  “Come on, Winky, sit down.” Elsie led them into the living room area of a huge room. Twenty feet away was the corner where the old woman had been working—on a large canvas with naked boys running through what looked like a deserted city. Against his will, Mitchell was moved by the painting. He looked down at himself to make certain he was still covered.

  Elsie rested her brush on a mosaic coffee table and knit her paint-stained fingers. “How’s everything going with you, Winky?” Only then did she realize that Nancy’s nose was twice its normal size; with her hand over her mouth, she asked what had happened.

  “I got in a fight.”

  “Oh, Winky-dear.” The old woman sucked her tongue.

  “Why’s she here?” Dr. Marcus Mendelblum followed his voice into the light. He was tall, mustachioed, and wore a pair of old-man’s gray pants with brown suspenders.

  “She was in a fight, Marcus.”

  “So what’s new?” He squinted at Nancy, at Mitchell, and back at Nancy. “Let me look at your nose, Missus Knockerbocker.” Mitchell did not like the deep sarcasm in the doctor’s voice.