by Ward, Robert
For we were killers—it was that simple, that terrible. We had dropped a man into the kind, bubbling river not two miles from here, and I thought, as we rolled mindlessly along under the uncaring trees, that in this one violent, absurd moment, I had moved from boyhood innocence to something dark, something so strange that I had no name for it. Looking over at my friend, I actually thought, So this is it, so this is what it’s like to really know things. It seemed as though a great weight crushed down on my shoulders, a stone of a thousand pounds. I laughed sadly to myself and thought of those same genteel pilgrims who had founded my great home city, and I remembered that all their civility and gentle Chesapeake life was itself bought and paid for in blood. It occurred to me that Jeremy and I were in our own strange way closer to our forefathers now than I had ever been before. Yes, tonight I had touched and known some dark secret that all conscious men shared, that no effort was free, that no yearning for refinement or class or love itself was achieved without deadly struggle, like those sweet Puritan colonists who bought their bounteous harvest through righteous slaughter.
Though I said none of this to Jeremy, I knew without a doubt that he understood what my long silence meant, for when we finally stopped the battered Nash in front of our Chateau Avenue house, he smiled sadly, looked at me, and said, “You know things now, my boy, you know things, but remember, as good old Johnny Unitas told Raymond Berry, in order to make the catch, you have to keep your eye on the ball.”
And that made me laugh, for I knew he was right, knew it in my deepest bones, he was dead-on right. There was no other way to get through this. I had to keep my eye on the ball and nothing else, but still, my laughter didn’t stop the chill that lay just beneath my skin.
I opened the door to head up to the house, but as I did, Jeremy reached over and grabbed my left arm.
“Wait a second,” he said and there was a deep weariness in his voice. I turned and saw the exhaustion in his eyes.
“What is it?” I said.
‘I’m not going in,” he said.
“No?”
“No. I have to get over to D.C. by 9 A.M. and then hit Virginia by noon.”
“Virginia?”
“Ah, yes, my friend, I suppose in all the confusion I neglected to tell you. We have interest in our cards from three schools in the good old Blue Ridge Mountains. So I’ll be gone for three days.”
“You look like you’re ready to drop,” I said. “You need sleep.”
“Who says I do?” he laughed.
“Me,” I said. “I say it.”
He smiled his crooked smile then and boxed me on the arm.
“You think you can tell me how things are now? Is that it?”
“That’s it,” I said darkly. “After tonight, I think now maybe we’re really partners. After all, isn’t that what you wanted?”
He nodded his head and ran his hand through his cowlick.
“As I told you the first day, it’s destiny, my boy,” he said.
That stunned me a little, but in a second we both laughed again, a strange hollow sound, like the laugh of a child lost in a fun house.
“Only one thing, Tom,” he said. “You’re still a lousy businessman.”
“No worse than you,” I said.
We both smiled at that.
“What would you have me do?” he asked. That caught me off guard.
“Really?” I asked.
“Really.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but my answer surprised myself.
“You should heal,” I said.
“Like I healed Billy?” he said.
“Billy’s not your fault,” I said.
“Oh, well, maybe like I healed Johnny then?”
“You’re forgetting, I killed Johnny,” I said.
Jeremy sighed deeply and shook his head.
“No, it was me. It was me all along. I dragged you into this. Are you sorry you’ve come?”
“No,” I said. And in spite of everything, I meant it.
He ran his hand through his cowlick and wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel.
“You know,” he said, “I have always known that I was destined for something. I have always felt it, deep inside. But, it’s still just out there, just barely beyond my grasp.”
“On the other side of the screen?” I asked.
“You’re getting way too bright,” he said.
I stared at his face and for the first time felt as though I had pierced the mask of charm that he wore so effortlessly. I reached out and patted his shoulder, then gripped it tight.
“We’re going to make it,” I said.
He looked out at the first morning light.
“Do you think so?” he asked softly.
“I know so,” I said, but there was a crack in my voice, and there was just the slightest flutter of his eyes before he switched on the ignition again.
“I have to get on the road, Tom,” he said.
“Call later,” I said.
I opened the door and got out. When I looked back in, he was smiling at me and there was such a tired, beat tenderness in his voice.
“You’ll love Farlow’s crabs,” he said. “Believe me, it’s going to be one hell of a party.”
I started to answer him, but Jeremy had already slammed the car into reverse and bashed into the Chevy behind him. Then he ground the gears into first and drove off into the morning.
When I got back to my room, I found a note from Val.
Have gone to my own place to think. Call me later.
Love, V.
I thought I understood. What had happened last night was like a bad dream, and now in the light of a new day, the dream should have ended, but it hadn’t. None of us were ever going to be free from this night. It would mark us all forever, whether or not Mr. A. found out.
Even so, I was dead tired and fell asleep within minutes. My dreams were ghoulish in nature. I saw fish eating a human face until there was nothing left but half a nostril and one staring eye. I saw a giant crab moving toward the Baltimore harbor and men with cameras being swallowed by his great gaping mouth. I heard the sound of flashbulbs and the pop of revolvers and saw fish-faced men in black suits chase two children down a maze of cobblestone toward a crooked house.
Then the phone rang, once, twice, and I felt a rough hand shaking my shoulder, and looked up and saw Eddie standing above me.
“Tommy, phone for you.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know, man. Weird call.”
I pushed my way out of the bed, then grabbed a T-shirt and hustled downstairs. The dreams were still rolling on inside me, and I felt a fear in my stomach as bright as a one-hundred-watt bulb.
I picked up the phone and sat down on the old couch.
“Hello.”
There was a long pause, then I heard a small, childish voice: “Watch out. Please watch out.”
“Watch out?” I asked, confused and dream ridden. “For what?”
The voice came again, small and fearful. It sent chills down my neck.
“Watch out. Please watch out for the moat monster.”
I felt my breath come hard, and it was a long time before I could speak.
“Billy,” I said. “Billy. It’s all right. You’ve done it. The prince is going to come down from the castle. You see? He’ll open the drawbridge and he’ll make sure that his friend is safe.”
There was silence.
Then the voice came again, small but insistent through the line, “Watch out. Please, watch out …”
My throat was dry, parched. Then Dr. Hergenroeder came on the phone.
“Mr. Fallon,” she said. “It’s a miracle.”
“Yes,” I said, too shocked and moved to go on. “Yes, it is.”
“He’s still a little disoriented,” she said. “He needs to hear the story back in the context Jeremy set up. Can he come out here?”
“Jeremy’s in Virginia,” I said. “He had some work to do. He won’t be back f
or a couple of days. Will Billy be okay?”
“Yes, I think so. He’s awake. He’s able to talk a little, but he’s terribly concerned with the outcome of the story. Of course, I could improvise an ending, but it would be better if he heard it from Jeremy.”
“I’ll tell him when he calls in, Dr. Hergenroeder,” I said.
“That would be fine. Give him my love.”
“I will, Doctor,” I said. “Good-bye.”
I put the phone down and fell back on the couch. I looked around the living room and thought of that day only four months ago when I’d first come to this house.
Though the room was practically the same—there was even the same old Time magazine on the battered barber chair—everything now seemed entirely changed.
Now it seemed to me, more than ever, the house on Chateau was an oasis, where life was lived at a pace and at an emotional intensity that existed no place else and that I knew could never be sustained.
I shut my eyes and heard Billy McConnell’s words again in my head: “Watch out. Please watch out.” And melodramatically I thought that he was speaking not to the picture at all, but to me and Jeremy and Eddie and the Babe and Val. Lord, watch out for the moat monster, all of you. Please, watch out.
I slept fitfully on the couch until ten o’clock, then called Val. We agreed to meet at Monty’s for lunch at noon. Before we hung up, I told her about Billy McConnell’s breakthrough, expecting her to be as excited by it as I was, but the enthusiasm in her voice was forced. Indeed, it occurred to me as I hung up that she sounded strained and burned out, and that worried me. I didn’t go back to sleep again.
I arrived early and was surprised to see four white guys with Beatle haircuts practicing rock ‘n’ roll licks on the same bandstand where the poetry readings were held. I watched them for awhile; they were doing an electric version of “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” an old folk song by Blind Lemon Jefferson, a blues singer Eddie had turned me onto. It sounded forced and loud to me, all the subtlety and quiet desperation was gone from it. Instead, these four guys sounded like they couldn’t wait to die ignoble, brokenhearted, and anonymous, that their fondest dreams were to be placed in a shallow grave on some burning hot pine grove highway in Alabama.
I listened to their frantic black face interpretation until Sam Washington came in and leaned at the opposite end of the bar. I remembered that first time we met, months ago, and took up a stool at the opposite end.
But apparently he remembered as well, for he walked toward me and leaned his big belly on the bar.
“White boy, how you making it?”
“Okay,” I said. “What’s with the rock ‘n’ roll band?”
“New thing, man. Monty’s only doing poetry ever other week. Rock draws bigger crowds of rich white folks.”
“I didn’t think Monty’s was about big crowds,” I said.
He smiled and put out his big palm, and I touched it lightly with my own.
“Tommy,” he said, “you suffering from an advanced case of young.”
“Last time I saw you, you were with two great-looking girls,” I said.
“Yeah, the Glitter Twins,” he said. “They was some very nice chicks. We had us a lot of good times of a very short duration.”
“And then what?”
“And then? Hey, they move on. You know how it is, people come, people go.”
He smiled as if he had just described a process as unchanging as the patterns of the sun and moon, and I shook my head.
“Tell me this, Sam. Doesn’t anybody ever stay anywhere?”
“Not in this world, baby,” he said easily. “But you don’t really want to go back to the old one, do you?”
I didn’t answer that but quietly sipped my beer. Then, from the back of the bar, Val came in, and again I was knocked out by her beauty, her black leotard, her red turtleneck, her ballet shoes.
“Hang loose, baby,” Sam said.
He winked at me, turned, and headed toward the jukebox.
Val came toward me, and I put my arms around her. She hugged me back, but there was no joy in it, more like a child forced to hug a distant uncle.
We ordered a plate of mussels and two National Bohemians, and I whispered to her that we had disposed of Johnny.
“Where?” she asked.
“You don’t need to know,” I said.
“But I want to know,” she said.
“I know you do but forget it, ‘cause I’m not telling you.”
She shook her head and patted me on the hand.
“You’re noble,” she said, “protecting me from the mob.”
She said it with the right flourish of melodrama, and I had to laugh.
“I was only half kidding,” she said. “You are noble. You have a streak of true Southern nobility. And I like it very much. Only …”
She stopped and twisted her forefinger through her red hair.
“Only what?”
“Only, I’m not ready for nobility, Tom. I’m not ready for you.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’m leaving, Tom. Going out West.”
“Why? What the hell for?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s time, I guess.”
“Really?” I asked. “Oh, because it’s time. Well, that explains everything. I mean with that explanation I can fully accept …”
“I love you,” she interrupted. “You know that. That’s one reason I’m leaving, so that we don’t regret anything.”
“Well, I’m going to regret it,” I said. “I’m going to regret everything. You can count on that. We could make it work, Val. We’re both writers. We can offer each other support, help each other.”
She laughed and took my arm, then reached with her free hand into her purse. She took out an envelope with the Poetry Magazine logo on it and shoved it across the table to me. I opened it and pulled out rejection slips from Poetry, Contact Magazine, The Paris Review, and six or seven others I’d never heard of.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “How long have you been sending these out?”
“For over two years. And I’ve never had one published.”
I held her hand tightly.
“That’s rough,” I said. “But that’s all the more reason you need me. I can help you through this period.”
She shook her head.
“I have a confession to make, Tom,” she said.
“What?”
“I read your journal the other night. I wasn’t trying to find out anything, I was just curious. I’m sorry …”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No, I shouldn’t have. But I have to tell you something Tommy. There was more real life in your writing—as rough as it was—than in any of my poems.”
“Oh, bull,” I said. “That’s rubbish.”
“No,” she said. “No, Tom. It’s you. I could really hear you in your work.”
“Yeah,” I said, “Timid, overly intellectual, cautious, not knowing who the fuck I am from one minute to the next …”
“That’s right,” she smiled, “but it was you. I mean, it’s you trying to become yourself, and it was exciting to read. As for me, well, I had a kind of epiphany. It’s a funny thing. I’m always reading about epiphanies in literature, that one clear moment when you really know reality, when you see the naked truth about your life. And I always imagined when I had mine it would be this glorious shining insight. I would be doing something completely banal, like taking a bath, and it would come to me. I would see I was destined for greatness. Well, I finally had it. I went walking down the docks last night and I looked out and saw the boats and the blue and yellow lights from the harbor, then everything seemed to recede, and I felt that I was deeply, deeply alone in a tunnel somewhere, and presto, like that, I realized who I was. It seemed unbelievably simple to me. I was just this fucked-up neurotic girl who thought she had talent because she was so fucking lonely.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, reaching for her hand.
&nb
sp; But she shook her head, fighting back the tears.
“No, Tommy, let me finish. I knew, I mean I really knew, I have no talent as a poet. You know it yourself. I’m just an imitator. So I’m throwing all this out.”
I sat there stunned. She had delivered it all with such weight that her decision seemed irrevocable. Still, I couldn’t let her go.
“You don’t mean it. You’re just upset,” I said, not knowing if I was lying to her or not, “after what we’ve been through.”
“No, I do mean it,” Val said. “I know this is going to hurt you, but you’re moving, Tommy, and I am too. We’re together partly because of Jeremy. I owe him so much but not enough to watch him go down. I can’t stay around and see that.”
“He’s not going down,” I said.
She said nothing to that, only sipped her wine.
“Where will you go?”
“San Francisco.”
“With Hogg?” I said. “That English twit?”
“No,” she said. “He asked me, but I don’t want to live with anybody. I’ve been dependent on men too long, Tom. Like Garbo, I ‘vant to be alone.’ “
I ignored her self-conscious little joke. My hands were clammy, and I felt my heart racing wildly.
“Listen, I’ll quit school,” I said. “We’ll go together.”
“Quit school?” she said. “No way. You love school, remember? I don’t want that on my head.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “The last of the sentimental romantics moving through the silent night alone.”
She looked at me dead-on then and nodded sadly.
“I guess that’s me,” she said. “It’s not very original, but it’s what I want.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Christ, I envy you your courage. And I love you.”
“I love you, Tom,” she said, but there was a finality in her tone that broke my heart.
“When will you leave?”
“Soon.”
I said nothing to that.
“We have tonight, Tommy,” she said.
“Great,” I said bitterly. “Fine.”
“If you want it,” she said.