All they gotta do is quash that murder indictment, and the next day I walk right out of here, ’cause I’m not crazy, Benedict Howards is the sanest man in the world, saner than a man, better than a man, immortal like a god…
Howards paced the room, thinking: I paid good money for worse rooms than this in cold dry Panhandle days when I couldn’t afford better, not a bad deal, the dumb sap government pays the rent on this joint while I sit it out, while they quash the indictment…Then I can stop faking it and get myself declared sane again, easiest thing in the world, ’cause I’m the sanest man in the world…nobody’s ever been as sane as me…
Yeah, not such a bad room, pretty good view, the bed isn’t bad, and they even bring me my meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner in bed any time I want it. Even got…even got…even got…
Howards froze. Mustn’t think about it! Can’t think about it! Think about it, and it turns itself on! Barron! That fucker Barron, he can turn it on from the inside, the bastard! Any time he wants to he can turn it on from the inside, any time I forget not to think about it, he can turn it on…from in inside…don’t think about it…don’t…
But Benedict Howards knew that it was too late. He had thought about it, about the television set built into the wall, high up where he couldn’t get at it, couldn’t smash the leering smart-ass fading black circle of Jack Barron watching him, always watching him, immortal just like me, be there forever, always watching! Watching! Watching! Watching!
He found his eyes moving upward to watch the face on the television screen; he had to watch, had to stay on guard, that fucker Barron was always watching him! And Barron’s immortal, I made him immortal, can’t get rid of him, and he’s on the side of the fading black circle, gotta watch him, don’t dare turn my back…
Benedict Howards shook his fist at the television screen, the screen they had sworn they were cutting out of the hospital circuit the first time he had tried to climb the wall to smash it. But they lied! They lied!
“Damn you, Barron! I’ll get you, kill you, buy you! You hear that, Barron, I own you! Own you down to your toes!”
But the smirking phosphorescent face burning itself from the glass screen into the back of his eyes said nothing, just smiled that damn smart-ass smile, the deep, shadowed eye-hollows black, black, black, shimmering, circling, face of the fading black circle closing in, fading circle of death…
Howards staggered backward, felt the edge of the bed cut into the small of his back, fell backward on to it, feeling tube up nose down throat choking him his life leaking away in phosphor-dot plastic bottles, and Jack Barron’s face laughing smart-ass doctors nurses fading black circle life leaking away tube up nose down throat forever…
“Noooooooo!” Howards screamed and screamed and screamed. “I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying…”
Footsteps outside, the man with the needle again, needle of sleep, of blackness, needle of dreams of the fading black circle closing in, darkness closing in, face of Jack Barron, life leaking away forever…forever…
“I’m not crazy!” Howards screamed. “I’m not! I’m not! I’m dying…I don’t wanna die, don’t wanna, don’t wanna…Don’t let it kill me! Don’t let him kill me!”
Lukas Greene pushed the vidphone across his desk, rubbed his eyes. Malcolm running too, he thought. What’s that make, four…or five? Everybody wants to get into the act! As the Chinese like to say when the shit hits the fan, “We are living in interesting times.”
Hard to figure what’s gonna spring next. When Jack torpedoed Howards all the shit in the country hit the fan. Teddy the Pretender locking up the “regular” Democratic nomination, if there is such a thing any more…And the old “Foundation Democrats” read out of the party and running their own candidate…Democrats jumping to the S.J.C…maverick Republicans bolting the coalition and running their independent candidate…now Malcolm Shabazz running, and even old Withers making noises again. Still, with Jack on an S.J.C.-Republican coalition ticket we probably have the inside track.
But it’s sure become a bookie’s nightmare! Yeah, we’re living in interesting times. But at least we got as much chance as anyone to come out on top when the Great Unwashed finally puts Humpty-Dumpty together again.
Greene sighed. President Jack Barron, he thought, and Vice-President Lukas Greene…Well, stop crying, you nigger you, you knew that was the way it had to be. Jack up front, and you number two shit-color brown, black is more like it, you maybe get to go as far as any nigger can.
The Black Shade, oh, what a laugh, you white nigger you, as if there could be a black shade any more than there could be a white nigger! Who knows, Greene thought, maybe that’s why I started that one in the first place. If there really could be a black shade, then maybe there could somehow be a white nigger…in a White House, someday, somehow…Can’t kid yourself now, baby, this is nitty-gritty time, and if the S.J.C. finally gets its President, it’s gonna be Jack, not you, white, not black.
Come on, he told himself, snap out of it, man! Remember why you got into this racket in the first place, you felt it in your belly then. Remember how it was? Only lost that gut-feel when you got your little piece of the action. Well, that’s over now, it’s a whole new hand of cards, and who knows, maybe now we got some aces.
And without Jack, we’d still be nowhere. Whatever Jack gets, he deserves it, he paid his dues, the poor fucker, with him immortal, and Sara dead, the only immortal except for Howards squirreled away in some loony-bin somewhere. Don’t envy Jack Barron, man! Maybe now he is like a black shade in the way that counts, like black is being a stranger in someone else’s land…Like alone…And who’s more alone now than Jack?
Greene shivered at the thought of the man who was his friend, who might still be alive when he was dust a million years, unless they found a new way to immortality in time. But until then, who can be as alone as Jack, who can see what he sees, feel what he feels…?
Look him in the eye and call him friend…!
Jack Barron fingered the Acapulco Gold, hesitating at the door of his outer office. Come on, man, you gotta stop brooding and play ’em one day at a time already. Can’t keep playing this Weltschmertz schtick for the next ten thousand years…
But so many things I want to forget that never should be forgotten. Sara…won’t forget Sara ever…
Oh, yeah? Ever…The word had a whole new meaning, like everything else when you looked at it through new eyes. Eyes that would always be new, young eyes going through changes every morning like a kid who knows he’s got his whole life ahead of him, always ahead of him, and what will I be like in a thousand years?
A thousand years alone…
No, that’s old-style thinking, just the short view. Someday they’ll lick immortality for everyone without murder, now that the slobs can taste it coming, with a Public Freezer Bill already on the President’s desk and hara kiri for him not to sign it, and with all that public pressure…In the long run, everyone’ll make it to where I stand, and in the meantime I can sit it out alone, got all the time in the world. In the meantime…
In the meantime, looks like I’m stuck in the politics bag till after the election—had to play along with Morris to keep the show. And anyway, admit it, man, it’s kinda fun.
Forty-seven different Presidential candidates all running around like chickens with their heads cut off, sure to shake things up, just what the country needs. And who knows, I might even win—and then the good old U.S. of A. is really gonna get a boot in the ass. But not the one Luke and his boys are figuring on…
What a joke on Luke, he thought, he’ll piss in his pants! “Social Justice”—hope I do win just so that dumb fucker Morris can clock what Jack Barron’s brand of Social Justice is. Nitty-gritty Social Justice, is all, once we get a Negro in the White House, even by the back door, nothing’ll ever be the same.
Politics! Politicians! Such schmucks, they got no sense of humor at all. Think they got themselves an image that can win, and a puppet they think they can
screw around behind the scenes with after the election.
Boy, if I do win, is everyone gonna shit bricks after the Inauguration! When good old Jack Barron resigns the Presidency in favor of Vice-President Lukas Greene. Black Vice-President Lukas Greene!
That’d teach the pricks to play the image game with the world’s champ. A nice juicy custard pie in the face of the whole country, just what it needs, four years of a black President, and who knows, they might end up liking it enough to make it eight the hard way.
In the meantime…
He opened the door, stepped into the outer office, and stood by Carrie Donaldson’s desk. Carrie looked up at him with guarded eyes. “Mr. Barron?” she said.
Well, why not? thought Jack Barron. You got wounds, but they’ll heal, and anyway, you owe this chick something. And she’s a mighty fine lay, remember?
“Let’s go have some lunch, Carrie,” he said. “I’m gonna take the afternoon off, so you’re off duty too. Want to take it off with me?”
“Does that sound the way I think it sounds…Jack?”
Barron laughed. It felt good. “It does, so long as you keep calling me Jack,” he said.
“Jack…” she said, taking his hand. And they left the office together.
Just another chick? Barron wondered. Or something more? Well, who cares how it’ll turn out, a one-night stand or a week or a year or a hundred years, what’s it matter how long?
Suddenly it didn’t seem very important to know just how anything would turn out, or what would happen in the next minute, or the next year, or the next century. It wasn’t even such a hang-up anymore that he hadn’t learned how to remember Sara without hurting. It had finally gotten through to him that he had plenty of time to heal even the deepest of his wounds, play any game he wanted to any number of times, become anything he wanted to be and then change his mind. Time enough for anything…
Like all the time in the world.
END
Bug Jack Barron Page 36