Barking Man: And Other Stories (Open Road)

by Madison Smartt Bell

  He turned and went back through the doorway and down the steps. When his head had bobbed down below the level of the sill, Ton-Ton Detroit and the ocean let out a long sigh together. Then he got the foil out of his pocket and began to shape it back into a pipe.

  Clay was taking the walk back toward Cap Martin because he couldn’t think of anywhere much else to go, no matter he’d nearly worn a rut pounding that same pavement back and forth all day. In another hour it would be dark and he wasn’t a step nearer to a full meal or some place to stay than he had been when he got off the bus that morning. Reaching the point where the cape began to turn out to sea, he went down a set of steps to check out what the beach might look like to sleep on. The rocks seemed pretty hard and lumpy; he guessed that was why so many of the beach babes lay on those little cushioned mats. He picked up an egg-shaped stone and tossed it up and felt it join his hand again with a meaty slap. One thing was sure enough right now: the time for subtlety had passed.

  At a turn about halfway up the Escalier de la Plage, there was a break in the left-hand wall that let into a little scrabbly place in the undergrowth which none of the condos quite overlooked. Clay had swaddled the rock in both of his socks and he was crouching down behind the wall, rolling it from one hand to the other. The corner smelled sweetly of honey-suckle and somewhat more dimly of dog mess and urine. Some kind of birds were hooting in the twilight all around; he wondered if they might be owls or what. Near him some nits hovered in a cluster just under a branch, all keeping the same precise distance from one another, like they were stuck to something invisible and couldn’t get free.

  The first person up the stairs was a fat lady with groceries and Clay let her go on by, on the assumption she’d probably already shot her wad at the store. He had to wait nearly twenty minutes for the next one, but when he came along he looked just right: a thirtyish dude in pointy shoes, tight pants and a barf-yellow shirt, swinging one of those purses Frenchmen liked to carry from a little strap on his wrist. When he had mounted the step just past the gap in the wall, Clay snatched him back with a hand clamped over his mouth, conking the padded rock on the side of his head at more or less the same time. The dude went soggy on the second clobber and Clay dumped him face down in a tangle of dry vines, then turned him over for a quick check-out he wasn’t maybe going to die. Four minutes later he was walking the promenade back to Menton and taking his easy time about it. He hadn’t looked into the purse just yet, but it felt fat and promising, snugged into his waistband under his shirt, and he thought the town was starting to look kind of pretty, now that the lights were coming on.

  Well, just thank God she had her father’s heavy-duty skin, was what Mindy was thinking as she walked back toward Menton. It would be tough to be Mom on a trip to the beach; still, there was something really amazing about how she never failed to get herself fried to ashes the very first day they went out anywhere. By the time they’d got back to El Dumpo, she’d been completely broken out in welts. Which meant she’d spend about the next two days in bed gobbling antihistamines and aspirin and slithering around in practically a tidal wave of cortisone cream. Well, you couldn’t say that she wasn’t the one who always did it to herself. On the plus side, though Mindy was sorry about the sunburn and all, that along with the whole pickpocket episode had created enough confusion to buy her some time on her own.

  Traffic on the street she was walking was really kind of incredible for such a small town. The little motor scooters whirred in and out among the cars, droning away like big fat wasps. It would have been a lot more fun to be riding on one than to have to keep dodging them on the crosswalks. Have to try to do something about that, the next couple of days … but for now she was happy enough just to be out by herself for a little. Daddy had given her money to eat, but she didn’t really feel all that hungry. The thing to do would be sit down somewhere and see if she could get a drink. Just up ahead was the town casino, which didn’t look like too bad of a place. There was a sign flashing over a side door that said DISCOTHEQUE, but the guys in the tuxes there in the hallway looked like they were probably bouncers and she doubted they would let her in, not the way she looked right now. In Vegas you had to be twenty-one to crack a casino, and she couldn’t pass for that without different clothes and a lot of makeup and some more help from dimmer light than this.

  Of course it might always be different in France, but she didn’t really feel up to a hassle. She walked a block or two on past the casino, swinging her purse on its braided strap and peering into the different cafés that sprawled out on the sidewalks. The trouble was, they were all kind of small and she would rather have gone in somewhere she wouldn’t be noticed while she tried to decide what she wanted to get. A half block ahead she saw one that looked bigger, with tables outside on a concrete apron that broadened into the junction of the two side streets. The banner over the front door read LA RÉGENCE.

  Inside, the place was a little queer, kind of run-down and grimy, but plenty big, one huge room with such a funny zigzag shape you might have taken it for three. There was a little bit of everything: in the back a cafeteria type of restaurant, in front a long metal bar and in the narrower space that divided them there was even a kind of a newsstand. Mindy stood there for a couple of minutes, turning a rack of moldy paperbacks while she tried to figure out what she wanted to order. Beer made you fat and she hated bar wine and she didn’t know how to say mixed drinks in French—besides which, she had heard they were really expensive. At the bar were mostly middle-aged Frenchmen drinking Pernod, but she couldn’t stand that thick licorice taste. After she watched for a while she saw a guy at the bar get served with something that looked like a Tom Collins. Before he could carry it off she lunged into the space beside him.

  “Un comme ça,” she said, and pointed as the bartender caught her eye.

  “Un long-drink,” the guy said to her, smirking. “Vous voulez un long-drink?”

  “Bien sûr que oui,” Mindy said, picking up a little speed. Long-drink, hey, she could pronounce that no problem. The guy was maybe a bit of a jerk but at least there hadn’t been any hassle about proof. She took the tall glass out on the patio and sat down at a round table with her back to the show window. There were all kinds of kids swarming around the other tables and she put her sunglasses on, even though it was almost dark, so she could spy on them a little without being noticed. One thing she could pick up right away: if she wanted to fit into this scene very well, she was going to need about another suitcase full of clothes. The stuff she had brought would be fine for the Cape but it was going to look too loud around here, the way everybody was so deep into pastels. Not that her heart exactly cried out for a pair of turquoise tennis shoes or anything like it, but she didn’t want these people to think she looked queer.

  But all of a sudden she was feeling eyes on her; somebody must think she looked okay. Covered by the sunglasses, she looked over—it was a guy in a wrinkled tan suit going by on the sidewalk, dark-skinned and really very good looking. In fact, he even looked a little like Prince. She would have smiled back at him but he went by too quick. The long-drink didn’t taste all that damn strong but she could tell by the way her thoughts were getting a little soupy that she’d probably got her money’s worth on it. Better slow it down a little, maybe; the drink was so cool and she’d been so warm she’d already killed more than half the glass without noticing. Three French boys sat down one table over from her, one really cute one with sun-bleached hair and a coffee-rich tan, and she switched her chair around halfway toward them to see if she could eavesdrop some. But she couldn’t seem to hear them very well at all; it was like her ears were stopped up or something. It took her a minute to realize that she could hear them, sure enough, she just couldn’t understand a word they said. French in France was not working out to be quite the piece of cake she had expected. She’d always ripped through language lab like a comet, but the guys on those tapes spoke like very slow retards compared to the way it went over here. Her glass cli
nked back on the tabletop, empty. Man, that stuff had a pretty good punch, whatever it was they were putting in it. She felt warm and happy and ready for another one, though until she got a better grip on the language problem, she might just be better off on lemonade. No doubt Daddy had managed to come up with a place where no other Americans would ever turn up in about a gazillion years, and she needed to be able to meet people somehow. Still, another long-drink might have gone down fine, but Daddy was supposed to be meeting her with the car. Most times she wouldn’t have let that stop her, but she wasn’t quite sure what went in those things yet, and if her toes were, twinkling too much when she got back, she might have more trouble getting out next time.

  It was getting fairly dim outside and Martin had drawn the curtains, so it was almost completely dark inside the bedroom. Nadine lay face down on the bed, uncovered, her back speckled with ghostly white daubs of cortisone.

  “God,” she said, “I don’t feel too sharp.”

  “I don’t blame you.” Martin knelt and felt in the side pocket of his carry-on for the bottle of Ricard, which he’d put on the top. “Anything I can get you to drink or whatever?” he said.

  “No thanks,” Nadine said. “I just feel like I want to turn over on my back, but I bet I wouldn’t like it if I actually did.” From the drifty tone her voice had, he could guess she was probably a little feverish. “I don’t know,” he heard her mumble. “Maybe we should have gone to the Cape.”

  “They have sunburn on the Cape too, remember,” Martin said. “Also, if we went to the Cape again, I’m afraid by the end of the trip our daughter would be a pregnant dope addict with five different kinds of venereal disease.”

  “You have a way with exaggeration,” Nadine said.

  “I’m a pessimist, it’s always worked for me in court.” Martin strolled to the side of the bed. “Where can I touch you it’s not going to hurt?”

  “Try the inside of my hand,” Nadine said with a weak laugh.

  Martin stroked her palm for a moment and then spread her fingers back on the pillow. “Well, I’ll be right outside on the porch here,” he said. “I’m leaving a crack in the door, so just call if you want anything, okay?”

  “Thanks, Marty,” Nadine said. “I think I’m just going to go to sleep, probably.”

  Martin inserted himself into the tiny kitchen and took out the pitcher of water he’d put in the fridge just before he went out to call American Express. His theory of vacations was that a certain amount of catastrophe was always sure to be included and he wasn’t so unhappy to have got this much of it over with so early in the trip. Nadine’s sunburns were a given, you could write that off before you left home, and she hadn’t lost any money or credit cards, only the packet of traveler’s checks and the cheap wallet that held them, so the damage control looked fairly efficient so far. There was nothing on the agenda now but to make a little run for some food to bring back and pick up Mindy on the way—speaking of which, he was happy enough to have a couple hours off from being her parole officer, not a job that suited him too well in the first place. He doubted her French was really good enough to get her in serious trouble here. Not the first evening, that was a bet. He dropped an ice cube into a short glass and carried the bottle and pitcher through the front room and out to a small white table by the balcony rail. The tin cap of the Ricard came off without cutting him even a little bit—nice work there, Marty; things were looking up. He liked pastis but drank it only on vacation, kind of a reward for surviving the journey to wherever it was. The amber syrup streaked misty green where it touched the ice cube, and when he poured the water in, it clouded up to the brim. Martin took a hard enough belt to numb his teeth slightly, looked up and discovered the mountains.

  He couldn’t think where they’d been that morning; maybe he just wasn’t paying attention, or they might have been covered up with cloud. In the twilight the highway was no longer noticeable. It had turned very quiet, and beyond the canyon the mountains were bathed in silence and in the light, which remained wonderfully clear even as it faded. As the light receded on its slow smooth curve downward, the mountains began to lose dimension, flattening away into a deep-water blue distance, the rangy line along the peaks forsaking its distinction to evaporate into the darkening sky. Suffused with a calm so unfamiliar he could not recognize it, Martin raised his glass to the mountains and smiled.

  When morning came it was the kind of morning which Ton-Ton Detroit did not like. Inshore it was clear enough, though the mountains had been decapitated by cloud, but out on the water it was so hazy that the horizon had disappeared altogether and there was nothing where it should have been but a rolling band of zero-colored vagaries. The sun was not shining from any definite direction; only an evil-seeming radiance whirled down into that amorphous zone that might have been either sky or sea. Ton-Ton Detroit went grimly through the trial of his morning ablution, then picked his way back across the rocks to his bag and began to worm into his dashiki. When his head emerged from the neck hole he was horrified to see that that New York kid had managed to slip up on him while he was blinded by the cloth.

  “Well, uncle, I’ll say we must be two of a kind.” Clay grinned at him. “Both of us be getting up with the birds.”

  Ton-Ton Detroit said nothing at all. Mechanically, he went ahead with his preparations for the day, making a prodigious mental effort to annihilate the other’s presence from his mind. When his wares were arrayed down the front of the dashiki, he fitted the horned radio over his ears and turned on France Culture. Time for les informations, and on a day like this one was shaping up to be, he wouldn’t doubt the news would be all bad. Clay walked a little way down the sea wall, stretching and bouncing on the balls of his feet, then turned around and started to come back.

  “You know what I used to believe, uncle?” he said. “I used to honestly think that people in Europe still carried real money. But I want you to just look here at how bad I been fooled.”

  From between the bottom two buttons of his shirt Clay produced one of the flat leather purses the younger Frenchmen sometimes carried and stuck it out at Ton-Ton Detroit at the end of both his arms. Ton-Ton Detroit moved to turn up his radio and drown out whatever Clay might be going to say next, but by some cursed accident he touched the wrong dial and instead was caught listening to a blurry French cover of some American pop tune he knew he had always hated even without being able to completely recognize it now.

  M’enlève pas ma yunyunyah …

  M’enlève pas ma yunyunyah …

  M’enlève pas ma yunyunyah … oooh-ahhhh …

  He flinched, his teeth squeaking together, and turned the radio off. All things considered he was not particularly surprised by this development. He had had ominous dreams all night and the flics had already flipped him upside down and shaken him this morning on his way out to the breakwater, turning all his gear out onto the asphalt of the parking and leaving him to scrape it back together when they were done. They knew that he knew that they knew that he had had nothing to do with the mugging at Cap Martin, but whenever anything of that kind happened they liked to throw a little scare his way in case perhaps he might inform, though up to now he never had. Clay pushed the zip of the purse back with his thumb and spread it open across his palms.

  “What do you think, uncle?” he said. “Don’t try to tell me that’s not pitiful. A guy carries around this fat old bag and nothing inside it at all but what?” He gave the purse an angry shake. “Suntan oil. Address book, okay. Pictures of babes, man, this cat knows some ugly women. Here we got a bracelet of some kind of worry rocks or something, I don’t know what. And five different kinds of credit cards, three of which I never even heard of. And not enough cash for a baby mouse to make a nest in.”

  Clay shook the bag some more, jogging the contents up and down. Ton-Ton Detroit put on his fisherman’s sunglasses but the inside of the purse didn’t look any different under polarized light.

  “I tell you something, uncle,” Clay sai
d slowly. “You just about the best friend I know in this whole town. Man, I know you got to know somebody can help me move this plastic.”

  “Je balance pas,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. I don’t rat. But maybe it was time he changed his policy.

  “What’s that you say?” Clay said. “You know I don’t talk all that much frog.”

  “I can’t help you any, son,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “You might just as well be showing me a nice handful of radioactive rocks.”

  “That bad?” Clay fanned the credit cards out like a hand of five-card draw and then folded them together and stuck them in his top pocket.

  “You ought to get rid of that mess, boy,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “I can tell you from here it won’t bring you any happiness at all.”

  “Well, you know I want to get rid of them,” Clay said. “But I was like counting on you to show me the way how. Come on, uncle, I know you know somebody.”

  Ton-Ton Detroit forced out the bottom of his breath and turned himself to stone. Clay took a few nervous steps back and forth along the wall and then slapped his coat pocket and took out a box of Marlboros.

  “You like one of these, uncle?” he said. “Go ahead, I owe you one.”

  “I like my own brand,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “You find them in that pocketbook?”

  “Ah well, what if I did?” Clay said. “Still not enough to take me very far. “He poked a cigarette in his mouth and dropped the box back in his coat. “While we at it, you got a light?”

  Silently, Ton-Ton Detroit handed him a single kitchen match. Clay looked at it a second and then struck it on the wall and lit his smoke. After he had flipped away the matchstick he scooped out the contents of the purse with the motion of somebody seeding a cantaloupe and dropped everything off the edge of the breakwater. Then he zipped the purse back shut and began to fondle the smooth brown leather.

  “Nice Spanish leather we got here, uncle,” he said. “Quality workmanship too, all handmade, just look at that stitching, it’s made to last. I wouldn’t doubt it would bring you two, three hundred francs at least if you wanted to hang it on your rack. People around here go for this kind of thing.”