The Nail and the Oracle
Page 26
“Strobe,” said Specs, announcing and asking.
“Not now.” Jorry wasn’t sure why not now. Maybe it was not wanting to arrive at the place with Specs; you didn’t go anywhere with Specs, you found him there. And maybe it was wanting to be alone on a dark street for a while, to think about Libby on real leather next to you and the tach pushing up towards six, towards seven, towards someplace way out of town where nobody would know, and lots of time there and back early. Spec said, “Later, man,” and walked. Jorry stood next to a high hedge and did his thing about the Mustang.
Maybe it took a while and maybe not; there’s no time in there, but what brought him back was bang on the sidewalk with a little plastic handbag that skittered lipstick and Tampax and a cracked compact and some change all out and around.
It was Joanie with the long pale hair falling away from the clean pink part. She didn’t see him and she said, “I don’t care.” Then she stood quite still for the longest time with her eyes closed. Jorry didn’t want to say anything while her eyes were closed, but then under the streetlamp he saw they were not closed tight enough to keep tears in, and the streaks on her face were like cracks in a doll if you put a light inside. So he picked up the handbag and touched her with it and said her name. She gasped and banged at the bridge of her nose with the back of her hand and looked at him. After a while she said, “Jorry,” and took the bag.
“I was just standing here,” was all he could say, and bent to pick up the compact and the Tampax. He found a quarter and a dime and straightened up. She held out the handbag, open, and he dumped the stuff into it and dropped the compact again. “Are you all right?”
She started to laugh in a way he didn’t like at all, but by the time he had dipped down and up for the compact he realized that she wasn’t laughing at him. It wasn’t even laughing. Whatever it was stopped abruptly and she did something no girl he had ever heard of had ever done; she took his hand and put it against her breast. Never in all his life had he felt anything so soft and alive and wonderful. She asked him in a soft, breathy voice, “Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Well, no,” was all he could say.
She lifted her hand away from his; it was up to him whether or not he left it on her. He dropped it away. His hand could still feel her; he had the crazy thought that it always would. She said, very slowly, “I have been so damn lonesome.”
He just shook his head a little. He hadn’t seen her around for a while but he couldn’t ever remember her looking lonesome. Not ever.
“Jorry—”
“What?”
She wet her lips. “You know where I live.”
“Well, yes.”
“Look, I’ve got something to do right now, but I’ll be home about eleven. There’s nobody there tonight. You come.”
“Well, I don’t—” His mouth was suddenly too dry to release another word.
“I mean,” she said, “I just don’t care.” He was hung on her eyes like a coat on a nail. “Please, Jorry. Please.”
“Well, all right,” he said, and she held him for a moment and then turned away; he thought his knees were going to buckle. He watched her walking away, long legs, long back, long hair all flogged by the shadows of tree trunks as she walked. “Oh wow,” he whispered.
After a while he walked slowly down Third, somehow aware as never before of the impact of heels on pavement, the press of toes, the smell of a lawn mowed that afternoon and a hint of cat pee and how sharp blue starspecks could pierce a small town’s Friday sky-glow. Then and there he didn’t feel any more like I’ll-have-to-ask-Mom Jorry, or they-won’t-let-me Jorry, or Jorry who was always on the outside looking in, or the inside looking on. “Man,” he said quietly to the nighttime, “you got to do your thing.” He was quoting somebody or other but he meant it. Then he was in the light, and who should be coming out of the candy store but Chazz.
Chazz had long green eyes and an eagle’s beak and no chin, and a funny way of coming up to you as if he was walking a little sidewise. Jorry called him. It seemed to make Chazz glad. “Hey man.”
Jorry made a c’mon motion with his head and walked away from lights and people and let Chazz catch up with him. They moved along for a moment and Joanie’s, “I don’t care!” popped into Jorry’s head. It made him grin a little and it made a pleasant cold vacuum appear in his solar plexus: fun-fear. He said, in a Chazz-sidewise kind of way, “About that stash.”
Pleased astonishment. Chazz banged his hands together once and smiled all around as if at an invisible audience in the dark, to whom he said, “He’s with it, he’s with it.” He hit Jorry. “I about had you wrote off as a brownshoes.”
“Me.” Jorry knew how to use a question word as a flat statement. He liked how it came out. “Where’s this grass?”
Chazz released a sudden roar of laughter and shut it off. Full of glee, he looked all around and sidewised up close, and said in a half whisper, “Man, I been looking for you. I just didn’t know till now it was you.” He began walking purposefully, and Jorry strode along beside him, willing enough but a little puzzled. They got to the next streetlight and Chazz looked all around again. “Roll up your sleeve.”
“What?”
“Roll it up. I want to see something.”
Jorry started to think something and then didn’t want to think it. He rolled up his sleeve. Chazz grasped the biceps with both hands and squeezed and held on. Jorry tugged a bit, but Chazz held on, a great eagerness showing on his face. “What the hell you doing?”
“Shut up a minute,” said Chazz, and hung on. He was peering at the crook of Jorry’s elbow. Suddenly he released the arm. “Beautiful. Oh man, but beautiful.”
“Beautiful what.”
“Like that vein, it’s a piece of hose, man.”
“Chazz, what the hell you talking about?”
“Like you’re like me, man. Some cats, you can’t find it with an X-ray, but you and me, we got the gates wide open.”
Jorry tried out the words. “Chazz, if you’re holding we’ll smoke. If not we’ll Injun rassle or just forget it.”
Chazz again produced that cut-off blast of laughter that went on in silent glee. When he could he said, “Smoke! That shit can wait, man. I got us a trip, not a buzz. Like four, six hours at twenty thousand feet with the wind behind us.” He came close and whispered, “I got … speed.”
“Speed.”
There was a long pause. Jorry had the painful realization that I’ll-have-to-ask-Mom, They-won’t-let-me Jorry was maybe standing on a higher step, but he was still around. On the other hand, to have missed being a brownshoes by so close a margin, only to fall right out of this fellowship and back into Squaresville—it was unthinkable. And besides—he was scared. Veins-Speed-God. His mouth was suddenly completely dry, which had the odd effect of reminding him of something. He worked up spit and swallowed hard before he could say, very carefully, “Oh hell, man, six hours. I got a date at eleven. I’m going to need everything I got.”
“You don’t need the date.”
“Oh, huh.”
“Who is it?”
“A chick.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Honest to God. Any other time, Chazz, but not tonight.” Apparently he said this just right too, because Chazz sounded real sad when he said “Oh wow,” and hopeless when he said “She got a friend?” and Jorry knew for a second (he forgot it later) why round shoulders and a big nose and no chin was looking to shoot speed. Chazz bit on his lip a while and then said nakedly, “Look, I’m going to wait for you. Like I got it and I checked it out and I know how, but man, I don’t figure to fly solo, not the first time.”
Jorry said, “I dig.” What Jorry dug most was how scared Chazz was. He didn’t have to look at whether or not he was scared or how much; this could come first and it made him grateful. He hit Chazz and said, “So later,” and could see Chazz was grateful too. Then the Mustang flew in wawoom to the curb, nosed down and squatted there.
Chazz said so it showed, “Jorry’s hung up, he’s making out.” Jorry thought from what he could see that Highboy liked this and Libby didn’t, but what could that matter, ever? Chazz was saying, “But you could drop me by the Strobe, right?”
Highboy waved at his door latch: permission, but Chazz could open it for himself, and said to Jorry, “Keep the beat, baby,” which was so-long and also something to do with making out, and made him feel pretty good, but all the same damdamn there go the tail-lights. And the funny thing was, he had to go by the Strobe to get to Joanie’s house anyway. You never know why you play it the way you do.
At night (it isn’t even there in the daytime) the Strobe is a wide bright storefront on a row of dark ones; light is a lake in front, with lightning; cars whale through it, people shark and minnow through it, and away a bit, once in a while, the Highway Patrol hawks by seeing everything, looking for something. Specs was there, knowing it all, and as soon as he saw Jorry’s face he said to it, “Making out.” Two words: congratulations, you didn’t think you could keep it from me, who is it, if you don’t tell me I’ll find out anyway, you are maybe becoming something to notice around here, I’m watching you. All of which Jorry acknowledged: “You know how it is.” He saw the Mustang in the middle of the light-lake, tail-up in a sprinter’s crouch in the shallows two feet away from the curb; Highboy needn’t park straight. Chazz wasn’t there.
Specs said, “Three guys got burned by the same chick. Their folks got together and went to the school.”
Burned. Jorry couldn’t grab that, unless—“Who?”
Specs said who, three guys he knew, two of them were in History with him. But that wasn’t what he wanted to know. He wanted to know who the girl was. He didn’t want to ask and he didn’t have to; Specs said it was Joanie. Damdamn. At which point Highboy and Libby came out of the Strobe and crossed to the Mustang. Highboy opened her door for her and that shining car fielded her like a good catcher’s mitt. Highboy legged around front and slid in, and the chrome pipes growl-howled. From the Strobe came a chick with sit-on-it shining black hair and hip huggers tight as a blister, white, cut so low in front that “They give away shaving cream when you buy those,” Specs said in his ear, and Highboy made a gesture that Jorry would remember all his life it was so great, that would last longer in his head even than what else happened right after. Highboy blew her a kiss. Highboy blew her a kiss right in front of and all around Libby and made Libby smile at it. Highboy blew that chick a kiss while he snapped his clutch and the wide ovals screamed him away in a burning launch; he blew her a kiss turning evenly in his luscious-leather bucket; he blew and threw his kiss in a wide steady backhand that ended with him smiling and releasing the last of it through the big wide rear window, all the while scorching rubber and squashed tight, him and Libby, against the welcoming seat-backs. So great.
Also he misfigured his angles. At the end of the row of dark stores and across a small street was no curb or sidewalk but a bare bank, low at first and tipping up steep, and the engineer doesn’t live who could design it more perfectly to lift up the right side of a car and flip it, not to spin and flip, but to take off and corkscrew. It wasn’t more than seventy, seventy-five yards from the Strobe that the Mustang flew and flipped and hit upside down and against an elm tree and burned. The Highway Patrol always knows what to do and they were there, but knowing how isn’t enough sometimes.
Jorry walked home through the dark streets, trying hard to wipe out what was behind him without opening up what was in front, trying to get by himself, not with Jorry-maybe-you’re-worth-watching or with Mom-can-I-Jorry, but with himself; and who the hell might that be?
About Chazz and mainlining, about Joanie and the burn, about getting killed in the Mustang, he could have known without leaving the house. Mom said it all, Mom batted one thousand. He could’ve known it all even if she hadn’t said it—but she did say it.
Also she said she worked hard and saw to it he ate and got good clothes and had a place for himself. She said it funny and she said it so often you didn’t hear it any more, but she did say it.
Pop also said he worked hard all day and when he came home he had a right. He said it to Mom and he said it to Jorry. Then Jorry would say whatever it was he always said, and nobody heard him either.
Jorry began to walk faster.
Because if there was a way to say something to Mom, and if she could say it to him and to Pop, so that they heard each other, they wouldn’t need to stay mad or feel useless, not any of them. Like if somehow you can make people just listen to each other, not just listen to you. And you listen too. Everybody.
Jorry began to run because he really believed you could make someone else listen. He knew because he’d done it. He’d listened to every word Mom said about tonight, the only thing was he couldn’t hear it until later when those things happened. And now he really believed you could make somebody listen now. And would you believe it, after all that had happened it was still only a quarter of twelve.
He went in the back way because no matter what else, Mom always had for him a way in. He locked the door from inside because when he was in Mom liked the rest of everything shut out. This seemed to mean something as he climbed the stairs. He heard their voices up there, hammer-and-tongs. He smiled to himself because he knew something they didn’t.
It was the same thing he had heard going away: why can’t you speak to your son. And: Coming home I got a right. But it was the same thing drawn out ragged and harsh: Jorry realized that they had been going around and around since he left. Believing that people could listen, listen and hear, he knocked on the door.
Pop, undershirt, galluses down, the last straw was under the angry eaves of his eyes and burning; Mom, gray pigtails (only at night, pigtails) and so worn, so worn altogether out by not being heard.
“Pop, listen.”
“I wash my hands,” Mom cried. “Do what you want, the waste. Go in the ashcan, live there with your Chatz and the other garbage. I wash my hands.”
“Mom, listen.”
Pop probably didn’t hit him all that hard but it was so unexpected and he wasn’t at all ready. Lying down on the floor of the upstairs hall looking up, with Mom screaming, he saw his father big. Huge. Like he hadn’t since he was three years old.
“I had this for the last time and never again, you going out and her on my back, so out of my sight,” Pop bellowed and spit flew.
Jorry sat up and then knelt up. He said “Pop, listen,” or maybe he thought he said it. As he knelt there Pop went for him again, this time not with a man’s punch like the other one, but with a push in the face to throw him back and skidding, the kind of push where being hurt isn’t any part of it, but insult is. “Out of my sight!” Pop bawled, crack-voiced, and Mom was in the doorway and he pushed her too, back on the bed, and slammed the door. Somewhere in there Jorry stopped believing in anything.
He went back in town and did his thing here, and did it again there, and at a quarter to five he and Chazz were busted for use and holding, and a couple of weeks later the first chancre showed; that was in the House of Correction.
And that’s how Jorry got started.
Brownshoes
His name was Mensch; it once was a small joke between them, and then it became a bitterness. “I wish to God I could have you now the way you were,” she said, “moaning at night and jumping up and walking around in the dark and never saying why, and letting us go hungry and not caring how we lived or how we looked. I used to bitch at you for it, but I never minded, not really. I held still for it. I would’ve, just for always, because with it all you did your own thing, you were a free soul.”
“I’ve always done my own thing,” said Mensch, “and I did so tell you why.”
She ma
de a disgusted sound. “Who could understand all that?” It was dismissal, an old one; something she had recalled and worked over and failed to understand for years, a thing that made tiredness. “And you used to love people—really love them. Like the time that kid wiped out the fire hydrant and the streetlight in front of the house and you fought off the fuzz and the schlock lawyer and the ambulance and everybody, and got him to the hospital and wouldn’t let him sign the papers because he was dazed. And turning that cheap hotel upside down to find Victor’s false teeth and bring them to him after they put him in jail. And sitting all day in the waiting room the time Mrs. What’s-her name went for her first throat cancer treatment, so you could take her home, you didn’t even know her. There wasn’t anything you wouldn’t do for people.”
“I’ve always done what I could. I didn’t stop.”
Scorn. “So did Henry Ford. Andrew Carnegie. The Krupp family. Thousands of jobs, billions in taxes for everybody. I know the stories.”
“My story’s not quite the same,” he said mildly.
Then she said it all, without hate or passion or even much emphasis; she said in a burnt-out voice, “We loved each other and you walked out.”
They loved each other. Her name was Fauna; it once was a small joke between them. Fauna the Animal and Mensch the Man, and the thing they had between them. “Sodom is a-cumen in,” he misquoted Chaucer, “Lewd sing cuckold” (because she had a husband back there somewhere amongst the harpsichord lessons and the mildewed unfinished hooked rugs and the skeleton of a play and all the other abandoned projects in the attic of her life). Mensch was the first one she could have carried through, all the way. She was one of those people who waits for the right thing to come along and drops all others as soon as she finds out they aren’t the main one. When someone like that gets the right thing, it’s forever, and everyone says, my how you’ve changed. She hasn’t changed.