I went into the John, ran warm water, did my face the favor of a matutinal ablution. What I had to say to her now would be safer said at a distance.
“I may have to stick around here a few days,” I said as though I were talking about the weather. “There might be an inquest on Pingo or something. It was self-defense, but I might have to appear, I don’t know. But you’d be bored. Why don’t you fly back to the Apple today?”
Nothing. I could see her reflection in the mirror, seated on the bed. I toweled briskly. “And when you get back, why don’t you scout an apartment? Your own apartment?”
Nothing. And I had thought it would be like dropping a bomb.
“Tyler, did you hear me?”
She was playing with her grandfather’s gun, weighing it in her hand, turning the cylinder. Suddenly the mirror over the washbowl became an opaque screen.
White dots of light. Sensors relaying signals to me.
“Tyler, you’re not listening.”
“Why did my mother lose her mind?”
“Tyler listen. What I’m saying is—I don’t think we’re in love any more. I don’t think you’ll be happy living with me any more. I’ve done everything I could for you, but you’re not satisfied.”
“No I’m not,” she said.
“You never will be.”
“Because you haven’t told me. Why my mother lost her mind.”
“Your father told you. At great length.”
But this time, unlike the other two, the white dots were scattered, bidirectional. In no meaningful sequence.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“No I’m not,” I lied.
“What I’ve needed to know all my life you won’t tell me. I hate you for it, Jimmie.”
I hung up the towel.
“Two men have died for me. I killed them, really. You lived, you know, and won’t say. God I hate you.”
Mirror replaced screen. Dots disappeared. I had got no read-out except that of danger, which I didn’t yet understand. But I couldn’t stay in a stupid bathroom. I walked out, sat down in the chair, based elbows on knees, chin on folded hands, looked directly into those great gray gorgeous eyes.
“Don’t,” I said. “Not after what we’ve had together. I’m the one who’s been through the wringer lately, not you. I’m the one who should be bitter, but I’m not. I’m just sorry as hell, Tyler. For me and for you.”
Could have bitten off my compassionate tongue. Because her face hardened. I had seen that face before, shuddered at it before. On the wall in an old courtroom. A face I thought she had smashed to a skeleton of canvas and paper, paint and wood.
“Tell me, Jimmie.”
Then. Preknowledge. Just as I had known in advance her mother’s key would admit me to the tower—just as I had known in advance where Pingo Chavez would hide— I knew now what she would do.
“If you don’t, I’ll kill you, too.”
She was standing, Buell Wood’s 40178 in both hands, pointed at me. She took one step. Placed the muzzle of the .38-caliber, double-action, self-cocking Navy Colt against my forehead.
Of course. Inevitable. With the blood of those two bygone antagonists boiling in her veins. With the endless civil war being waged between her chromosomes. Oh, I could tell her if I wanted to. I could be a cowardly son of a bitch and say okay, baby, I christen you Miss Incest of 1946. The God’s truth is, Judge Charles Slocum Vaught Sr. raped your mother and you are the result. That’s right—your grandfather was your father. That’s why your mother’s been in the bin thirty years. That’s why she wouldn’t ever see your father, isn’t it? That’s why you wouldn’t be a daughter to them, isn’t it? That’s why you suckered us three poor bastards into coming out here, isn’t it? Because you know—deep down you’ve always known—just the way you’ve known since you were a child what was in that clock tower—but you wouldn’t let yourself remember till you saw it again last night—and you wouldn’t let yourself believe this till somebody said it out loud. Judge Charles Slocum Vaught Jr. was unable last night. But there, I just have. Said it. So you decide. If you can handle who Tyler Vaught really is, I’m glad. If you can’t, take a trip to San Carlos and you and your mother can cut out paper dolls together the rest of your lives. But I won’t say it, Tyler. Out loud. Kill me if you have to, but I won’t. Crossworth might have, Sansom surely would have, but not me.
Because I’m a gent. I believe in things like mercy and goodness and opening doors for ladies and courage and honor and wearing a necktie, I truly do. This may be a dirty world, but I refuse to litter it with one more tin can of gutlessness, one more scrap of finagle, one more cardboard box of the easy-way-out. I’ll keep your secret even from you, and no matter what, just the way I’ll keep your father’s and his father’s. So blow my obsolete brains to bits and be damned, Tyler. B. James Butters dies A DECENT MAN.
“I’ll kill you, Jimmie,” she said.
“Do that,” I said, my back to the wall. I disdained a blindfold, locked my eyes open wide. “I’m already dead,” I said. “At least who I used to be is. So do it.”
Time stopped.
My heart hung by a rope.
La Mierda de Dios.
Preknowledge. Just as I had subconsciously known all along where my pen pals were buried—just as I had known in some dark chamber of my mind that it must come to this in the end—I knew that she would pull the trigger now.
SHE DID.
I called Alvah Helms from a phone booth in the lobby at 6 A.M. as promised. He was still in Harding, where Border Patrol HQ reached him for me. I told him I had shot and killed Pingo Chavez in self-defense and he could find the body on the stairs leading to the clock chamber in the tower of Harding Courthouse.
“What was he doing up there?”
“God knows.”
“All right, we’ll see to it. Sorry about this. But you might like to know we corralled some of his key people at the ranch and we have tails on three of those vans in three different states. And say, you were right about those graves, too. We found the remains of two white adult males, one recent, one there for awhile. Who did you say their names were?”
“Philip Crossworth. Max Sansom.”
“Let me put ‘em down.”
I spelled them for him.
“And you think Chavez?”
“I know Chavez. And probably some of his goddamned deputies.”
“Probably. Well, we’ve got an assistant AG on his way down from Santa Fe. When he gets here he’ll go to work on ‘em.”
“Have him grill hell out of one named Harley. Really sweat him. He gave me a speeding ticket.”
“Harley?”
“Harley.”
“You still carrying a load of guilt?”
“Sure am.”
“Don’t. Snack died with his boots on. If we have to go, that’s how most of us would like to.”
“He didn’t have to. Does—does Annie know?”
“Yes. I had one of my men go to the house last night. Then I called her myself, an hour or so ago.” Alvah Helms cleared his throat. “She’s a dandy, that girl. Took it very well.”
“She’s a librarian.”
“Oh.”
“What about the boy?”
“He’s young.”
“So was I. How long will I have to stick around here? I need to get back to New York.”
“Go. You’ve earned home leave. I doubt there’ll be an inquest on Chavez. As to the two homicides, the writers, that depends. But I’d go. I’ll put in a word with the AAG. If the state of New Mexico wants you, they’ll find you. You could maybe do a deposition.”
“Then I’m going.”
“I’ll keep in touch, let you know how this winds up. What’s your address?”
I supplied.
“Thanks. Thanks for everything, Butters.”
“Helms, I owe the government for a gun. I gave away that Airweight.”
“Forget it. What’s a gun?”
My luggage was i
n the car, which I’d left in the Paso del Norte garage across the street. I rented a single, put in a wake-up call for noon, crashed and burned with my clothes on, was waked. I asked for the desk, was told that Tyler Vaught had inquired about morning flights to New York, had checked out in time to make one departing minutes ago. I then dialed the only Snackenberg in the book.
“Annie? Jimmie Butters. You don’t have to talk. I just wanted to say that this has really torn me up. Totaled me. I’m partly responsible, as you know.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“Well I am. Is there anything—anything—I can do for you?”
“No thank you.”
I’m leaving for New York now. Driving. Can I please come back this fall and see how you and Ace are doing?”
“No.”
“Next winter?”
“No.”
“Whatever you say. May I please phone you once in a while and ask?”
“If you like.”
“Oh God I’m sorry, Annie.”
“Goodbye.”
On the freeway heading north out of El Paso I took the Porfirio Diaz exit and found a shop and sent flowers. YELLOW ROSES. TEXAS.
3:03
Past Seventy-third Street, between Fifth and Madison. Coiffeurs Piccolo Mondo, where elegant dames have their hair done and play backgammon. An art gallery, Les Miserables. Little old ladies wearing boots and eating ice cream cones and walking their dogs. Garbage piled in black plastic bags. A Cadillac limousine perpetually double-parked.
When I got home, after four nothing days on the road, Tyler had evacuated my apartment. No note, not even an auburn hair on a pillow, not even a souvenir pair of panty-hose hung in the John to dry. For which I was grateful.
I took the Rolls to Rodney at once, for servicing and repair of the bullet holes. He said that except for her wounds, the campaign had probably been good for the old girl. I replied I hoped it had been for somebody.
I resettled into my digs and toughed it out in the city all summer.
I had a book to write, and only half of the first draft of the first chapter on the page. I’d left Frisby buzzing around the ceiling of the TWA terminal at JFK, exchanging travel tips with his buddies. He was due to catch the next flight to London, then transfer to British Airways outbound for Nairobi, with a refueling stop at Cairo. But I soon found I couldn’t get him off the ground. BLOCKED.
“Writers Block.” Frequently fatal. This was my first. I sat at the desk endless days on end. I bought a new Scripto pencil. I changed ribbon and correcting tape on my IBM. I overheated my audio with everything from Shostakovich to the Eagles. I consulted my publishers, who were unsympathetic. A contract was a contract. My friends advised a change of scene, a long driving trip out West, for instance. The nights were no better than the days. And not because of the sirens. Chills. Sweats. The damnedest dreams. BONES. BEARDS. ABRASIONS. BLOOD. A BODY LYING ON A LANDING. In the worst of them I could see the muzzle of an old Colt revolver coming at me, closer and closer, till the steel impacted with my feverish brow. I disdained a blindfold, locked my eyes wide open. I knew she would pull the trigger.
That I was alive was a matter, I decided at length, not of miracle but of character. Buell Wood’s character. When, in our room at the Paso del Norte, she had pulled the trigger, Tyler had been psychologically prepared to kill me. And rather than tell her the terrible truth about her paternity, I had been morally prepared to die. But the gun was not loaded. Buell Wood, I came to believe, had removed the bullets from his matched pair before taking the weapons up into the tower with him that night in 1916. He had shot down three men with them in 1910, been tried, been declared innocent—a miscarriage of justice of which, as an attorney, he was brutally conscious. He would use the guns as threats, therefore, but never again as instruments of death. And so, aware of his instincts, wary of his reflexes, he emptied the revolvers. And in so doing, saved his granddaughter from killing sixty years later. It was the most valuable legacy he could have left her. And me.
Autumn. Winter. STILL BLOCKED. This was no mere creative constipation. I knew what had happened. I had come down with a terminal case of adulthood. Hank Snackenberg had died with his boots on. B. James Butters had died standing on iron steps, goggling into the clock chamber of a courthouse tower in New Mexico, in a pair of Gucci loafers. The child in me who had once communicated naturally with other children had now passed puberty, cut loose the kite of his imagination, stopped riding a bike of delight around the block, started shaving and smoking and masturbating himself into maturity. Oh, with an effort I could still summon up a roomful of kids to read aloud to—but there was nothing new to read. Instead, I’d say to them okay, you little bastards—grow up. Get wise—this is no fairyland of talking flies and intercontinental flights of fancy. This is a hard cruel world of murder and blackmail and hate and rape and incest and greed. So get ready for it. Quit reading books. Watch TV. And don’t, above all, believe anydamnbody.
I don’t know what became of Tyler. I thought of her often, particularly when I found, in my small change, a coin painted with a blood-red streak. I’d hold it to my ear, like a sea shell, and listen. Hello! See my mark? My name is Tyler Vaught! I’m beautiful! Do you write? If you do, let me tell you about two old trials! They’d make a super book! Are you interested? Yes? Then find me, sleep with me, let me tell you! I thought of her not with rancor but with sadness. A haunted, ridden woman. The past is not only a time but a place, and while she might live now in New York or Paris or wherever, she had always been, would always be, a prisoner of that past. Inside the woman was a girl locked behind an iron door. For toys she had guns, for friends, ghosts. For tales, stories of vengeance and slaughter. For playrooms, a terrible tower and the back seat of a police car. For parents, a mother who was mad and a father who was not her father. I wished her luck. I wished her peace. And one day, freedom.
In the autumn I began calling Annie Snackenberg every two weeks. Each conversation was a carbon of the others. “Annie? Jimmie Butters.”
“Oh, hello.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Ace?”
“Fine.”
“Are you still at the library?”
“Yes.”
Pause.
“Uh, how’s the weather out there?”
“All right.”
“It’s raining here.”
Pause.
“Well, I’m writing like mad.”
“That’s nice.
Pause.
“Uh, Annie, would you mind if I come out to see you and meet Ace?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Oh. All right.”
“Thank you for calling.”
“My pleasure.
“Goodbye, Annie.”
“Goodbye.”
I had several letters from Alvah Helms. There was no inquest on Pingo Chavez, hence I wouldn’t have to testify or depose or whatever. One of his deputies—the one named Harley—had confessed to participation in the murders of Philip Crossworth and Max Sansom, and had implicated two others. The three had been indicted, pleaded guilty, and were shipped to the state clink for life. What pleased Helms most, however, and would have pleased Hank Snackenberg most, was the demolition of Los Esqueletos. Border Patrol had made a number of arrests in Chicago, Denver, LA, convictions were sure, and south of the border the Mexican authorities had nailed a slew of recruiters. This wouldn’t completely choke off the flow of skilled illegal labor, but it would cut it down, temporarily, to a trickle, and a few thousand Americans could go off unemployment compensation. Helms thanked me again.
Spring. STILL BLOCKED. I went, I am sorry to say, slightly on the sauce. One night in the Oak Bar of the Plaza I buddied up to the guy on the stool next to me. He turned out to be a Madison Avenue adman who wrote radio and tube spots for a deodorant and who had been twice-divorced and lived at a subsistence level due to alimony and child support.
I heard his
tale of woe, then said, “Lissen. S’pose I tol’ you that las’ year I was out Wes’ an’ one night I saw four skeletons which were lynched sixty years ago an’ were still hangin’ there? S’pose I tol’ you the las’ necktie party in the ol’ Wes’ took place in the tower of a county courthouse? D’you get it? In a courthouse? Sixty years? Still hangin’? Skeletons?”
“Balls,” he said.
“I shit you not,” I said.
“Still hangin’? Now?”
“Well no, not now. But las’ year—”
“I don’ like t’associate with drunks,” he said, and fell off his stool.
A misty night in May. AT THE END OF MY ROPE. I called the only Snackenberg in the El Paso phone book.
“Annie? William Bread.”
“Who?”
“Jimmie Butters.”
“Oh. Hello.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“How’s Ace?”
“Fine.”
“Are you still at the library?”
“Yes.”
Pause.
“Uh, how’s the weather out there?”
“All right.”
Pause.
“Well, I’m in mass production these days.”
“That s nice.”
“No, that’s a lie. I haven’t been able to write for a year. No sap in the Scripto. Not a damned word. I’m blocked.”
“I’ m sorry.”
Pause.
“Oh Annie, can I please come out and see you and meet Ace?” ‘
“Do you really want to?”
COMPREHEND.
“Annie, what did you say?”
“I said, do you really want to?”
COMPREHEND.
“Do you mean I can?”
“If you really want to.”
“Oh my God I do! Oh my God that’s great! I’ll be on a bird tomorrow! Will you get me a room at the Paso del Norte? May I take you and Ace to dinner tomorrow night? Can I stay awhile and talk to you and things? Can I come down to the library and sign my books? Oh my God Annie. Mercy buckets!”
A pure spring afternoon. The Chamber of Commerce had cordoned off traffic and cleared it of cars and dressed a block of Gold Street. A hardware store was false-fronted into the “Luna,” a saloon, a realtor’s office into the “Guarantee Electric Store.” Sears Catalogue Sales was now the “Crystal Theater,” a motion picture emporium, “Adults 25¢, Children 10¢.” Opposite, a Pontiac dealership had been transformed into a Ford by means of slogans in capital letters on both windows: “WATCH THE 4’DS GO BY!” and “20 HORSES UNDER YOUR HOOD-ALL HIGH-STEPPERS!”
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