The Kind One

by Tom Epperson

  “It’s from Lackritz, baby. Seven and a half carats! And that ain’t even counting all the little ones.”

  She slapped it out of his hand. It bounced across the red carpet and rolled under the pool table.

  Something changed instantly in his eyes, like a light going on or a light going off. He bent down and reached under the table and got the ring, then he grabbed Darla’s wrist and tried to force the ring on her finger.

  “Put it on, you bitch!” he shouted, and she tried to jerk her hand free then slapped at his face then dug her fingernails into his cheek. He yelled then whacked her across the side of her face and sent her reeling and stumbling over the carpet. He never saw the punch I launched; it caught him in the left temple, and he grunted and dropped to all fours. He swung his head groggily back and forth, a glistening string of saliva dangling from his jaws. I took Darla by the elbow and said: “Come on, let’s get outa here.” We started toward the door, and then my fantasy of whacking Bud with my pool cue came true except in reverse: the stick came down where my neck met my right shoulder, and broke in half. The pain was paralyzing, and I fell to my knees. Then Bud knocked me on my face, and his knee was in my back as he crouched atop me and shoved the broken end of the pool cue against the back of my neck. He roared hoarsely: “I’M GONNA KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!”

  “Bud, don’t!” screamed Darla as she tried to pull him off, then Dick and Anatoly came running into the room.

  “Bud, are you nuts? That’s Danny!” said Dick. Since they both knew the kind of man Bud Seitz was, it took a lot of guts for Dick and Anatoly to drag him off of me.

  I sat up slowly, rubbing my neck and trying to catch my breath. I saw that a smidgen of sanity seemed to be returning to Bud’s eyes.

  “Get him outa here,” he said. “Get him outa my fucking sight.”

  “Come on, Danny,” said Dick as he helped me up, and then Willie and Bo Spiller joined the party. They weren’t as gentle as Dick. They grabbed me under the arms and proceeded to give me the bum’s rush out of the house. I was looking around for Darla but she’d already disappeared.

  I hadn’t been home long when the phone rang. It was Bud.

  “What the hell happened, Danny?”

  His voice sounded different than I’d ever heard it before: kind of shaky, and small, and baffled.

  “You need to let Darla go, Bud. She doesn’t wanna be with you anymore.”

  “I guess it’s true, then.”

  “What?”

  “What I heard about you two. About her sucking your dick by the lake.”

  “No. That’s not true.”

  “You swear?”

  “Yeah. But there’s something you need to know. I love Darla. I wanna be with her. I wanna marry her.”

  “Aw, shit,” he said, and then came silence.

  “You still there?”

  “Yeah, kid. I’m still here. Listen. If you and her think you’re gonna go skipping off hand in hand into the sunset together, well it ain’t gonna happen. I mean, what kinda example would I be setting for you if I let you push me around over some broad?”

  “I can’t help the way I feel. And Darla can’t help the way she feels.”

  Bud gave a humorless laugh.

  “She’s using you, kid. You ain’t her type. You’re too nice. She likes crumbs. Like me. Rich crumbs. Then when she gets sick of one rich crumb she goes on to the next one. If they don’t get sick of her first.”

  “I don’t think you really understand her.”

  “Aw, I understand her all right. Believe me, I’m doing you a favor by keeping her away from you.”

  “If you think she’s such a rotten person, why do you even wanna be with her?”

  “Broads are like a disease. It’s like in the movies, where Clark Gable or somebody’s going into the fucking jungle. And then he gets bit by a mosquito, and he gets real sick, and he’s laying in some fucking hut sweating and moaning and talking out of his head, and the jungle drums are beating, and the cannibals are getting ready to come get him and cook him in a big pot, and it’s all ’cause that fucking little mosquito bit him.”

  “I guess I got bit too, Bud.”

  Silence, and then a sigh.

  “This stinks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, I’d sooner cut off my right fucking arm than hurt you. And to think about what I almost done tonight…I got plans for us, kid. Big plans. But Darla’s standing in the way. She’s got in between us. So what are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It ain’t gonna work, you going to Palm Springs with me. But we’ll talk when I get back. All right?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “See ya around, kid.”

  “See ya.”

  Then his end of the line went dead.

  Chapter 13

  ABOUT ELEVEN THE next morning, Nuffer called.

  “I’ve found out some information about the Sonoma State Home. I don’t think you’re going to like it, Danny.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “To begin with, it’s not a reform school at all. It’s a mental hospital.”

  “But—that doesn’t make any sense, Mr. Nuffer. There’s nothing wrong with Sophie.”

  “I’m afraid there’s more. The doctors there work hand in glove with an organization called the Human Betterment Foundation. It’s based in Pasadena. A lot of prominent scientists and educators are members. My good friend Harry Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times—he’s on the board. Their purpose is the betterment of the human race through the science of eugenics.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means keeping the unfit from breeding excessively. According to California law, the state can sterilize the feebleminded and insane.”

  “Wait a second. You’re not saying they might sterilize Sophie, are you?”

  “No, Danny, I’m not saying they might. I’m saying they will. All patients, male and female, who are committed to the Sonoma State Home are sterilized as a matter of course.”

  I thanked Nuffer, hung up, and crossed the courtyard to Sophie’s house. I had to knock awhile before Lois finally opened the door.

  She looked at me blearily. “Yeah? What do you want?”

  “Is Sophie here?”

  “Unh unh.”

  “Where is she?”

  “How the hell should I know? Out running wild, probably. Now get outa here. ’Fore I call the cops.”

  She shut the door. Her smell lingered. I walked out to the street. Looked up and down it. No sign of Sophie running wild, or doing anything else. I half hoped she had run away.

  I sat down on the steps to wait for her. It was a hot day, and the sun was shining nearly straight down, and there wasn’t any shade. I was sick of the sunlight and wished I was sitting here cold and shivering in the rain. I knew for a fact that I was living my final few days in sunny California. I wanted to get away from here like Darla had wanted to get away from Nebraska City, Nebraska, and Elwood, Indiana.

  Tinker Bell joined me for a while, but the sun became too much for her and she retired to the shade of a nearby bush. She lay on her side and gazed at me with her calm green eyes.

  After a while I checked my watch. I had to leave. I had to meet Dick at noon.

  “I love fucking fried oysters,” said Dick.

  He was on his second plate of them. He could eat a lot for a skinny person.

  We were at a restaurant called Eddie’s on the Santa Monica Pier. I was having the seafood platter. A melancholy-looking stork was sitting on a railing outside the window watching us eat.

  “Has Bud said anything about me?” I asked.

  “Yeah. He said if you was to come around again, not to let you in. But not to rough you up or nothing.” Dick shook his head. “Geez, Danny. You and Darla. What was in your fucking head? You must wanna die young or something.”

  “Are you going to Palm Springs with him?”

  “Nah. He wants me and the
Kornblum brothers to stay at his house.”

  “And guard Darla?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Camilla, our slinky, sloe-eyed waitress, brought us over two more mugs of beer. Dick slurped some down, getting foam on his moustache, as he watched her sway away.

  “When’s he leaving?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Which was Saturday.

  “And when’s he coming back?”

  “Sunday. You’re making me nervous, kid. What’s with all the questions?”

  “Don’t you think it’s time?”

  “Time for what?”

  “To get outa this racket. Like you’re always talking about. And sell goat-gland extract. Or whatever.”

  “Yeah, it’s probably about time.”

  “How about tomorrow night? Around midnight. Or whenever the Kornblum brothers fall asleep.”

  Dick chewed grimly on a french fry. “I don’t think I wanna hear this.”

  “All you gotta do is get a message to Darla. Tell her I’ll be waiting outside the gate for her at midnight. And then she sneaks outa the house, and you open the gate for us, and then we all get outa town.”

  “And then they catch us, and then we wind up keeping Tommy company. Out in the desert, by that fucking chicken ranch.”

  “They’re not gonna catch us. The Bud Seitz gang’s a sinking ship, Dick. It’s like the Monfalcone. Everybody’s ganging up on Bud. He’s gonna be too busy trying to save his own neck to worry about what we’re doing.”

  “Even if I was thinking about maybe going along with this, I only got about fifty bucks. How far’s that gonna take me?”

  I went in my pocket and pulled out a wad of bills and put them on the table between us.

  “That’s 500 dollars. It’s yours now. And I’ll give you another grand tomorrow night.”

  Dick gave a soft whistle. “That’s a lotta jack,” he said. But the money remained on the table at the end of the meal. I re-pocketed it, and we left Eddie’s.

  Dick lit up a cigarette, and we walked down the pier. The ocean breeze felt nice after the relentless heat of Hollywood. Far to the north I could see Point Dume. I remembered being there with Darla. Watching the sea lion on the rock as she told me about Beau Jack. All of a sudden it struck me that, though I had lost my past, I was building up a new past. Every day I was becoming more solid, less ghost-like. And I felt a surge of energy, an optimistic tingle down my spine, a conviction that I’d be able to pull everything off, make the world right for Darla and Sophie and me.

  We reached the amusement-park part of the pier. It was aswarm with kids. We stopped in front of the Ferris wheel. It was taking on new passengers.

  Dick blew out some smoke, and smiled a little.

  “Fucking Ferris wheel,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I loved going to Coney Island when I was a kid. There was this place called Dreamland. It was only open a few years, and then it burned down. They had the greatest rides. The Shoot-the-Chutes. The Fighting Flames. The fucking Haunted Swing. The Giant Racer Roller Coaster. I met this girl there once. Her name was Mildred Beasley. She was real pretty, and she wore real nice clothes. She said her old man was a watchmaker. I didn’t wanna tell her my old man was dead, so I said he was a shoemaker, and owned his own shop. Then I seen her looking down at my shoes. Well, my shoes was fucking falling offa my feet, they was so old, and I could tell she knew I was lying, but she didn’t say nothing about it. She just smiled. She was always smiling.

  “Anyway. I end up spending every fucking cent I got on her. I’m buying her cotton candy, and hot dogs, and teddy bears, and then we go for a ride on the Ferris wheel. So we’re going around and around together, and she tells me I’m the nicest boy she’s met all summer, and she kisses me right on the cheek. I’m telling you, Danny, I ain’t never been so happy before or since.

  “We made plans to meet up again exactly one week later, right there at the Ferris wheel.” He smiled again, a little bitterly this time. “I’ll give you three guesses whether she showed up or not. I’m still waiting for fucking Mildred Beasley.”

  It was quiet a minute, and then I said: “Wanna get on?”

  “The Ferris wheel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “With you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He seemed to consider it for a moment, then: “Nah. People’d think we was fairies.”

  We walked on, toward the rumbling roller coaster. Kids screamed as they were swept past us, as though caught up in a catastrophe. “You really good for another G?” said Dick.

  I nodded. Took the roll of bills out of my pocket and handed it over to him.

  “I ain’t never been to Florida,” he said. “I hear you can pick oranges right off the fucking trees.”

  I was still a few blocks away from the bungalow court when I saw Sophie roller-skating down the sidewalk. I pulled up beside her, tooted my horn. She looked over and smiled and waved.

  “You’re just the person I wanted to see,” I said.

  She seemed delighted. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Get in.”

  She clomped on her roller skates over to the car and climbed in. Her cheeks were flushed, and her face and her skinny arms were filmed with sweat. She was working on a big wad of bubble gum. She looked up at me expectantly.

  “I want to have a very serious talk with you, Sophie.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve found out some things about the Sonoma State Home. It’s not a very nice place. In fact, it’s a really bad place. I don’t think you oughta go there.”

  “I don’t think I oughta go either. But Mom says I have to.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “But what should I do? You mean I should run away again?”

  “I’m leaving Los Angeles. Tomorrow night. I’m going to New York. You wanna come?”

  Sophie looked as though she could barely believe her ears. Her jaws worked even faster on her gum.

  “Come to New York?”

  I nodded.

  “With you?”

  I nodded again. Now she nodded too. Vigorously.

  “Now this is gonna have to be a big secret. We’re gonna have to sneak away. You can’t tell anybody.”

  “It’s a secret,” she said solemnly. “I promise,” and she crossed her heart. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Somebody else’ll be going with us.”

  “Who?”

  “Her name’s Darla.”

  “Is she your girlfriend?”

  I shrugged. “She’s nice. You’ll like her.”

  She blew a pink bubble till it popped.

  “I doubt it.”

  Chapter 14

  AS I TOLD Dulwich my plan that night, he listened quietly, puffing on his pipe. Tobacco tonight, not opium. Tinker, on his lap, seemed to be listening too. When I finished, all Dulwich did was murmur: “Good old Danny.” His pipe had gone out, and he began fiddling around with it, trying to get it re-lit. Tinker jumped off his lap, walked over to the front door, and began lovingly licking herself.

  “Well,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Morally, I think you’re on solid ground in taking Sophie away with you. Legally, I think it’s possible you could be charged with kidnapping, and if apprehended, could spend a very long time in prison. As for Darla…” His eyes wandered up to the painting—the yellow-haired girl on the windy cliff. “I would like to see you and your Darla be happy together. But I wonder if getting her out of the house might not prove trickier than you think. For instance, how far can you trust this Dick fellow? How do you know, after taking your money, he might not simply shoot you in the back?”

  “I trust Dick. He’d never do that.”

  “And what about the charmingly named Mousie Kornblum and his brother?”

  “Everybody says they’re morons. I’m not worried about them.”

  “They may be morons, but they’re morons with guns, which makes them dangerous. It�
�s a common, and often fatal mistake to underestimate your enemy. Let me give you some advice, Danny: Worry about everything. Expect things to go wrong. Bring extra ammunition. Prepare to adjust.”

  “Okay.”

  Dulwich smiled sadly at me.

  “Can it really be you’re leaving tomorrow?”

  “I’ll miss you, Dulwich. It’s been great knowing you. You’ve been a real friend.”

  Dulwich set down his pipe and walked over to his desk and opened a drawer. He pulled out a small silver cross attached to a short white ribbon with a purple stripe.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “It’s the Military Cross. I’d forgotten all about it till I ran across it recently at the bottom of a dusty box. A forgotten medal awarded to a forgotten soldier for a forgotten action in a forgotten war.”

  “What happened?”

  “It had to do with a bridge. Over the Tigris River, at Kut. It had just been built by our engineers, for obscure reasons; but when the Turks arrived, the brass hats, in their infinite wisdom, realized it could be used as easily by them as by us, and ordered it destroyed. It was one of those death-or-glory jobs. One would have had to have been a fool to volunteer for it. I volunteered.”

  Dulwich picked up the photograph of the noble-chinned Aubrey Joyce off the cabinet radio, looked fondly at it.

  “I was in competition with Aubrey, you see. I knew he had already won the Victoria Cross in France. And even as I was volunteering I was already imagining telling him about my exploit after the war. In a wry, self-deprecating manner, of course, where he would have to read my bravery between the lines.

  “In the event, it was a nasty business. It went off a little after midnight. I led a small raiding party across the bridge. I had to kill a Turkish sentry with my knife. A dear friend, Taff Bickerton, was killed. Poor Bickerton. He was such a gentle soul. He had no business being in a war. But the dual mission was accomplished: the bridge was blown up, and I won my medal. My glittering bit of metal.”

  “So did you tell Aubrey all about it? After the war?”

  Dulwich smiled, as he sat back down. “Oh yes. It was all more or less as I imagined. He wasn’t the type to say so, you know, but—I could tell that he was proud of me.” He looked at the medal, then held it out to me. “I’d like for you to have it.”