The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  Late this afternoon we had brief but very unpleasant visitors. Four men in a jeep painted with the sign “Bill’s Wrecker Service” came driving into our camp, and tried to get their kicks out of harassing us. They were urging us to let them “see some fucking,” and when we refused they seemed on the verge of getting violent, but even though they were brawny roughneck types I guess they sensed that we outnumbered them by nine to four, so after calling us every foul name in the book they drove away.

  Tonight I’m insisting that the tent belongs to Day and me alone. Unless it rains or something. The nights are getting very cool, I hate to make them sleep out on the ground, but you have to stop somewhere.

  August 26

  It didn’t rain, but after the pot pipe had been circulated long enough it didn’t matter so we all slept in the tent. I think I slept with all of them. Once I felt his head to see if I could tell who it was that was on me and he was short-haired. Day. Vashti must have been showing him some tricks.

  I confess that I’m jealous of her. She is closer to Day’s own age, and she’s a very pretty brunette. I’m half expecting to hear Day announce that she is the reincarnation of Violate, and then the two of them will live happily ever after.

  Today I’ve been trying to get these people interested in doing some group dances that I’ve choreographed, but without much success. As Zeph says, “Why ball the air?”

  They have discovered the only remaining standing building in Dudleytown, west of here, the remains of what was probably the modest shanty or cabin of that couple who were the last residents, the doctor and his wife who went mad. It is not so much standing as leaning at a precarious angle. All of the roof and doors and windows are gone, but Bathsheba has persuaded the boys to straighten it up and fix it up and use it as the first building for their commune. They haven’t started work on it, but I think they’re serious.

  August 27

  Zephaniah is gone. For a while at least. Last night we used up the last of their supply of marijuana. Today they asked me if I knew where we could get some more, and I said I’m afraid that I didn’t know anything about sources of supply. Zeph said he knew a guy up in Stockbridge, Mass., who had a lot of it. He asked to borrow my car. He assured me that he was a good driver and that he would just be gone overnight and back in the morning. Although a couple of girls wanted to go with him, he insisted that they stay here as “hostages” in security for the car. He intended to go by himself, and take no one. It all looked completely aboveboard, but I still made a “deal” out of it: I told Zeph that he could borrow my car on condition that he and his friends leave as soon as he got back. I said that they could fix up the old shanty if they wanted to, since it’s at least a mile away from our tent, but that in any case they were to leave our tent for good and leave us alone. If that’s the way you feel about it, he said. Promise, I said. Okay, he said, I promise.

  So now he’s gone, overnight, in my car. The others seem completely listless and disoriented with him gone. They’re just sitting around, as if they’re in a waiting room waiting for him to get back. I’m thinking of taking a little walk with Day some other place so we can have another session in private, to find out what happened between Daniel and Renz Allyn. I doubt I could get him away from Vashti, though, darn it.

  Oh-oh. Here comes that jeep and those men again. I’ll have to stop. No, two jeeps! Three! God help

  18

  Seven months later, in March, I located and interviewed Felix G. Spofford of West Cornwall, age 39, who gave his occupation as truckdriver for the town of Cornwall and volunteer fireman.

  I showed him the two photographs. “Her,” said Mr. Spofford, pointing to Diana Stoving’s photograph, “I didn’t much notice. There were lots more girls than boys, maybe five or six girls but only three boys, that’s what made some of the guys mad, you know, the thought of those three boys getting all those girls to themselves, like a, you know, a goddamn harem or something. But him—” Mr. Spofford jabbed at the photograph of Day Whittacker, “I remember distinctly, one, because he didn’t have girl’s hair like them other two boys, and two, because he put up the worst scrap, I mean, hell, he dislocated poor Billy Evans’ shoulder and he knocked several teeth out of Lou Posolski, and poor Jim Burland was in the hospital nearly a week with a goddamn hairline fracture of his goddamn skull, and me, hell, I’ve still got a scar or two myself.”

  Here Mr. Spofford unbuttoned his shirt to show me a scar remaining from a minor chest laceration. “We never did get him, neither. I mean, we couldn’t lay him out. Finally, Sam Rompiello got his shotgun out of the jeep and I think he was really gonna use it on that kid, but I stopped him and said that would be murder, you know, and so we just told him—we told all of ’em—to get the hell right out of there and if they were still there the next day we would have state troopers in there and lock ’em all up for public indecency or something, and then we hung around, you know, to make sure they weren’t coming back, and they took off in every direction and never did come back. We kept what was worth keeping, ice chest, lanterns, folding chairs. But Lou Posolski had already ripped up that yellow tent with his hunting knife, so we burned what was left of it and threw in the fire some of the other junk they left behind, a pile of books, and them blankets that smelled so strong of cunt and come that you could hardly stand it and smelled even worse when they were burning. Holy Jesus.

  “But don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t part of that bunch of guys that went up there solely for the purpose of making those kids fuck right in front of ’em. No. That was George Zim and his bunch. Sure, we were all together, in three jeeps, but like I say, me and Lou was going up there just to run ’em off for public indecency and not because we had anything dirty in mind like George and his bunch. But when George and his bunch started trying to make the kids fuck right in front of ’em, me and Lou didn’t want to interfere, I mean, hell, mister, if they did fuck, that would be proof of public indecency, wouldn’t it? and if need be then we could testify against them that we saw them do it. And sure enough, when George and his bunch kept putting the pressure on ’em, one of the two long-haired boys asked for a girl to volunteer and one of these big-tit blondes volunteered and took her dress off right there in front of all of us, and laid down on the ground too, but Holy Jesus, that poor boy must’ve been so scared he couldn’t get him a hard-on.

  “That girl kept rubbing at it and telling that boy that if they couldn’t do it we were going to beat them up or worse, and that maybe we’d leave ’em alone if they did it, but that poor boy could never get it in. So that other long-haired boy tried, but he couldn’t get him a hard-on neither, ha ha! So then old George says well, by God, those boys are probably fucked out but George says he has a nice big stiff one himself and, so help me, he yanked it out and nearly started screwing that girl himself, but that’s when the other boy, this short-haired one here in your picture, he got mad or something and started fighting. He should of known better, him against twelve of us. But he was a real devil, and like I say, we never could lay him out, although we conked the shit outa those other two, the long-haired ones. Maybe just goes to show that if you keep your hair cut proper you can still keep your strength and can still put up a fight, but if you let your hair get long like a girl’s you can’t fight no better than a girl, though I got to admit, those girls were putting up a good scrap themselves, I got a hank or two of my hair pulled out by the roots, and old George nearly got his dick pulled off. But we laid out a couple of those girls too. I don’t mean, ha ha, laid ’em, but laid em out, you know.

  “Anyway, that’s one bunch of kids that probably thought twice before they ever went swimming without their clothes again in public. I bet they went back to New York where they came from. But anyway they never showed up in Dudleytown again. You know, some folks say there’s a curse on Dudleytown. Far as I’m concerned, those kids and their immoral ways was the curse, and we wiped it out. But far as they were concerned, ha ha, we were the curse on them. And the cursed wiped them out
. You could go up there today and not find a trace of ’em. The only thing left behind, and this is funny, was a few days later me and Lou went up again, just to check to be sure they hadn’t come back, and we saw this fancy red sportscar parked off the road on the other side of Bonny Brook. At the time we figured it just belonged to some of these rich artists that live around here, although it had New York plates. But three days later it was still parked there in the same place. After a week and it was still there, we got the state troopers in to check that maybe it belonged to somebody who had killed himself in the woods. But they searched all over the woods and never found any bodies. So they checked the registration in New York and found it belonged to some girl only twenty-one years old, and that’s when I figured it must have been one of those hippie girls, but if that’s so, how come she didn’t drive off in it? Unless maybe they were all so scared, and ran the other way. Yes, come to think of it, our jeeps were parked between their tent and that car, but you would think they might have tried to circle back around us to get their car, or maybe come back in the middle of the night or something.

  “That was a real expensive type of sportscar. Finally, it was towed off to the town garage, and matter of fact that’s where it still is, and after twelve months have passed, if it isn’t claimed, the town can auction it off to the highest bidder. Some of the guys are suggesting that the money we get from it ought to be used to have a patrol of citizens to check all of the woods regularly to make sure we don’t get any more undesirable hippie-types running around without their clothes and misusing our property. Me, I think that’s a good idea myself. God should have blasted those kids out of there with a lightning bolt or something, but God seems too busy elsewhere these days, so us citizens have got to do some of His work for Him.

  “Mister, how come you’re interested in these two, anyway? Are they more special or important than the others?”

  19

  Diana and Day spent the night holding each other in the niche in the underside of the rock called the Landlocked Whale. They didn’t know where the others were. Bathsheba, Zeresh and Rebekah when last seen were dragging the still unconscious Esaias into the woods, in the general direction of the old shanty, although Diana did not know if that was their destination. Barnabas and Vashti had been talking about finding the highway and hitchhiking to Boston. The Landlocked Whale was far enough from their camp so that the men couldn’t find them, yet near enough so that they could hear the distant voices and the sound of the jeep motors, and smell the burning of the tent and blankets. Diana and Day had grabbed up all that they could carry before fleeing: their sleeping bags, most of their clothes, a small sack of food, and the only thing that really mattered to Diana other than her purse with her pills and traveler’s checks: the tapes and the tape recorder. They didn’t have a free hand to carry a lantern, and thus had to find their way in the dark, and, when they reached the tiny cave under the Landlocked Whale, in the dark Diana had to rip up one of her shirts to make bandages to wrap the bleeding knuckles on both of Day’s hands. She was still in a state of shock from their ordeal, but also in a state of awe and admiration over the way that Day had done battle with those men. She took a deep breath and said to him, “That must have been Daniel fighting for you.”

  Day said only, “Yeah. It must’ve.”

  “I think you nearly killed two of them,” she said.

  “If I could get them one at a time, I would kill them all,” he said.

  Late into the night they could still hear the distant sound of the men’s voices, and finally, exhausted, they drifted off to sleep holding each other tightly in their sleeping bag in the den below the rock called the Landlocked Whale.

  At dawn Day woke her and said, “I’m going to check around.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “What if they left a guard?”

  “I’ll be careful,” he said.

  “Come right back,” she called after him.

  He was gone for only half an hour, and returned to report that all the men were gone but that everything in their camp had been destroyed. “Nothing left,” he said. “Not a scrap, nothing.” Then he said he was going through the woods to see if the others were at the old shanty.

  “Why?” she said. “What if they are?”

  “Maybe they need help or something,” he said.

  “Or maybe you just don’t want to lose Vashti or something,” she said with a frown.

  “I just want to see if they’re okay,” he insisted.

  “Please don’t bring them back with you,” she said.

  “I won’t,” he said, and went away again. This time he was gone longer, nearly an hour. She was hungry, and looked into the small sack of food they had saved. There was a loaf of bread, and a jar of strawberry jam. There was no cutlery; she used her finger to spread the jam on a slice of bread. While she was eating, she heard the sound of a motor, like a jeep’s motor, and hoped that Day would hurry back. What if the men sent a search party all around through the woods to make sure that nobody remained? The motor seemed to stop in the vicinity of their former camp. She rolled up the sleeping bag and stuff ed it and their other things and herself into the innermost corner of the den. Day almost didn’t see her when he came back. “Hey!” he said. “Are you hiding from me?”

  “Shhhh!” she said. “I think there are men around. I heard a motor stop at our camp.”

  He crawled into the den beside her, and said, “There’s nobody at that old shanty. Nobody anywhere. They must have all left Dudleytown completely.”

  “I don’t blame them,” she said. “We ought to leave too.”

  “What is Zephaniah going to think when he gets back and finds everybody gone?” Day said. “He’ll see that pile of ashes where the tent was and he’ll wonder if we burned ourselves up, or, if he’s smart enough, he’ll figure it out that we were raided. And then he’ll keep your car.”

  “Or maybe,” she said, “Esaias might be lying in wait for him somewhere in the woods on the Dudleytown road, and he’ll intercept him and tell him what happened, and then they’ll make a getaway.”

  “In your car,” Day said.

  “Well, what can we do?” Diana said.

  “That’s a good question,” Day said, and they spent most of the morning huddled together in the den, talking off the tops of their heads about what could be done, about all the various possibilities and eventualities, such as perhaps that Zephaniah would come at the wrong moment and be caught by some of those men. At one point, they had to stop talking, because they could hear voices coming nearer, and they waited in fear for several long minutes before the voices went away. “I guess they’re looking for us,” Day said.

  The morning dragged on.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Day said. “Let’s listen carefully, and if we hear a motor that sounds like your car, I’ll sneak around through the woods and try to reach Zeph.”

  But the morning passed, and the afternoon passed, without any sound of the motor of Diana’s car, although they listened carefully. It was not a noisy motor anyway; that was one disadvantage of an expensive Porsche. Day conjectured that the place where he would have to park the car was too far away for them to hear it, and suggested that they go find a hiding place nearer the place where he would park the car, but Diana insisted that they wait until dark. So they waited. For supper they had cheese sandwiches, and that was the last of their bread.

  Day spent some time after supper brooding. She had learned to detect those moments when he would become distant from her, even though he was right beside her. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Do you miss Vashti?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Really?” she said, trying to draw him out. “Not at all?”

  “She didn’t mean anything to me,” he said.

  “Then what are you thinking about?”

  “You,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” she said. “What are you thinking about me?”

  “I’m just wondering,” he said.
And then he turned his face to hers and said, “Listen. Tell me the truth.” And she prepared herself to have to confess her various peccadillos with Zeph and Esaias and yes, Barnabas too. But he said, “Did you really have a grandfather named Daniel Lyam Montross?”

  She laughed, partly in relief that it was not the question she was expecting. Then she said, borrowing an expression used by their recent friends, “Oh wow.”

  “Well, did you?” he persisted.

  “Here all along I’ve been suspicious that you are just inventing him out of your fantastic imagination, and now I learn that you’re suspicious that he never existed at all.”

  “Answer my question, Diana.” He had begun to tremble; he was getting very overwrought. “I need to know. Did you or didn’t you?”

  She could have answered him easily enough, but it disturbed her that he was so insistent, so lacking in faith. Did he think she was a liar? Worse, did he suspect that she was just some thrill-seeking spoiled rich girl, at loose ends, who had stage-managed this whole summer just for kicks? Worse yet, did he even suspect that she was perhaps in cahoots with Zephaniah and his friends, or even, for that matter, the men who had invaded them? Money will do anything, won’t it?

  “Go to sleep, Day,” she said. He did, and she got out her tape recorder and put a fresh tape into it and switched it on. Then she told him that he was Daniel Lyam Montross and she told him to open his eyes. He did, and she smiled at him and said sweetly, “Hello.”

  “Howdy, girl,” he said, smiling back at her.

  “You do know who I am, don’t you?” she asked.