Alex Brown was standing behind the bar washing the glasses as Clayton walked through the door and sat down on a bar stool. "'Mornin', Al. How's it going?"
Alex wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Listen, last weekend . . ."
The older man's eyes were somehow odd, lacking the usual combination of resentful disapproval and money-grubbing obsequiousness, and Clayton noticed the difference. He noticed his hands shaking slightly as he wiped the glasses, and he noticed the feverish cast on his face. "You feeling okay, Al? You look a little under the weather."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he muttered. "Look, that night last weekend . . ."
"Yeah, you were pretty obnoxious. What about it?"
Clayton was not making it any easier for him, and Alex struggled to keep the hatred from showing in his face. This bum has money, money I need, money I depend on. What have I come to, that I have to be polite to scum like this? "Well," he said haltingly, as if each word were causing him physical pain, "we were all pretty drunk. . . ."
"What do you mean 'we'?" Clayton laughed. "Yeah, we'd had a few, but you were like totally out of your mind, you know? Don't try to spread the blame. You started a fight with Sean all on your lonesome." Though he had entered with the intention of mending relations, Alex's apparent eagerness to do the same thing made it seem less urgent, and Clayton was delighting in his discomfort.
"Maybe I got a little out of hand," Alex conceded at last. "I just want to say I'm sorry it all happened."
"Yeah. What you mean is you need our business and you hope we'll keep coming in here to drink." He smiled broadly. "Well, here I am! Gimme a Bloody Mary. I didn't get my juice this morning, and I, ah"—and he winked at Alex—"after what happened last time I was here, I don't think I should have a Tequila Sunrise, if you know what I mean." He enjoyed seeing Alex clench his jaw as he began to mix the drink. "As for my friend Sean, you're gonna have to apologize to him in person. I mean, it was him you tried to rough up."
Alex shrugged in an effort to seem unconcerned. "You bring him in, I'll apologize. It wasn't right for me to get drunk like that." He paused. "Not that it was all my fault. He went out of his way to get me mad."
"Get off it, Al," Clayton said. "You were in a shitty mood and you took it out on us."
Alex began to grow red in the face. "Listen!"
Clayton patted him gently on the shoulder. "Take it easy, take it easy. Okay, let's just forget it." Alex placed the Bloody Mary down in front of him, and Clayton lifted it to his lips and downed it. He sighed contentedly. "Having a big party this weekend. Got to go home and get my shit together. We all might stop by tonight or tomorrow and give you some business." He stood up and walked to the door. "See you 'round, Al."
Alex breathed deeply, relieved at having discharged so unpleasant an obligation as repairing relations with his most free-spending customer. "Bastard!" he muttered, and then returned his attention to the glasses in the sink.
COME TO THE SEANCE! JANUARY 11!
R.S.V.P.
You are cordially invited to attend a seance as a guest of the late Grogo the Goblin on this coming January llth, at the Saunders estate in scenic Beckskill, NY. Drink and dope will be provided, but it would be cool to make a contribution to the common pot (Get it? Ha-ha!)
ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT TO IMPEACH LBJ!
VERNON SWEET FOR PRESIDENT!
R.S.V.P.
Sean collapsed into a flurry of snow, much to the amusement of the horde of inebriates who felled him with scores of snowballs. Rebecca was laughing along with the rest of them as she ran up and jumped on him before he could get to his feet. Others soon followed her example until Sean lay beneath a mountain of people halfway down the snowdrift beside the trailer. A stray dog who had been halfheartedly adopted by Rebecca, and who had been christened Heineken by general acclamation a few weeks earlier, ran over to the mound of people and began barking furiously. The human pile immediately disassembled and began to pelt the dog with snowballs, which sent the animal howling and snarling to the other side of the trailer. A few awkwardly positioned floodlights were the sole sources of illumination in the dark winter night, and this fact combined with the general state of intoxication to allow the animal to escape unscathed.
In the confusion attending the mass assault, Sean had managed to maneuver Rebecca to a position beneath him, and when the others rose and ran off to torment the dog, he quite pointedly made no attempt to move. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them back behind her head, smiling. "Well, this is cozy."
"Yeah, real romantic." She laughed. "I'm freezing my ass off."
"Want me to warm it up for you?"
"I'll start screaming rape," she warned her, eyes twinkling. Sean was about to attempt a witty reply when Heineken bounded over them, knocking into Sean and throwing him onto his side. Rebecca jumped to her feet and ran away, laughing.
The afternoon and early evening had been passed in an atmosphere of general merriment and abandon, and now, at nine o'clock at night, everyone was fast approaching the point at which a decision had to be made: either summon up the energy to go out drinking or settle in for a brief if relaxing evening of beer, pot, and Artie Winston's singing. Inasmuch as Alex's was the only local watering hole, the decision was easily made, if grudgingly accepted.
By eleven o'clock, two dozen people were lounging about the floor and furniture of Clayton's trailer, an assembly of friends from college, from the City, from Long Island, and from Beckskill itself. They sat in almost pensive silence as the resident minstrel of the group blended his mellow voice with the gently finger-picked guitar and soft harmonica.
"Well, I know right well that I am city-born,
But even so I know that I'm a mountain man.
My branches grow out in the city where I dwell,
But I got roots that reach way deep into the land.
Because the forests and the fields and the streams
Are where the living is the best for them like me.
And I got to follow trails in my dreams
And live upon the land or die upon it free . . .
Clayton, Rebecca, Lydia, and Dorcas were the only ones present who had not spent the previous week in some gainful pursuit. Thus three of them were also the only ones present whose eyes were not shutting with the pent-up weariness of Friday night. The fourth, Dorcas, had consumed so much sherry before coming to the trailer, and had indulged in so much beer and marijuana since then, that her head was lolling from side to side and her eyes kept closing against her will. She sat beside Peter and forced herself to gaze in front of her blankly, struggling to fight off the alcohol-and-drug-induced slumber that was gaining on her with each passing minute.
Rebecca had taken Sean's suggestive remarks of a few hours ago at face value and was beginning to feel a little miffed at his rather mellow weariness. He had been working a steady job, day after day, and he was unaccustomed to it. As her erotic inclinations grew, his seemed to diminish, and she was growing annoyed. Lydia was likewise unable to elicit any sort of response from Clayton, but unlike Rebecca she had no explanation for the inattention. Clayton was wide-awake and cheerful, but was ignoring her completely. She did not notice, or chose to ignore, the way he was looking at Dorcas as the pipes were passed around.
"I got so much soot dlying in my lungs
That I get stoned each time I breathe the mountain air.
I got a life expectancy of forty-one,
But dying don't seem quite so scary way up there.
Both of my feet are flat from walking on cement,
I rarely see more than a dozen stars at night,
My ten-foot room costs a hundred dollars rent.
I'm waging war where it isn't worth the fight.
So I'm leaving you, my darling, leaving you today,
Leaving you unto your world of windowsills,
Of cold cement and streets and great big steel homes,
And I believe I'll be a'heading for the hills. . . ."
Peter
and Dorcas were sitting together on the floor near one of the silent stereo speakers, her limp hand held in his, both of them as oblivious to Clayton's leering eyes as was Lydia. Deirdre sat beside them, staring at Artie as she swayed slowly to and fro with the rhythm of the song. Her friend Nancy sat beside her, very obviously bored to tears.
The people in the room represented both different stages of Clayton's life as well as the different locations of his residence. From his early high-school years, when Beckskill was a weekend retreat for his parents and Long Island their permanent home, were his old friend Buzzy Van Der Donk, Danny Douglas, Eric Franklin, and Gary Mercier, in addition, of course, to Deirdre and Nancy. From his brief stint in college, Sean, Peter, Russell, Artie, and a girl named Suzie Kosloski, whose inclusion in the group was a function of a promiscuity extraordinary in its extent and absolutely mind-boggling in its lack of discrimination. Dorcas and Lydia were, of course, from Beckskill, and from nearby Haddlyville had come Bill Scott and Teddy Metzger, whose devotion to the rock group the Grateful Dead had caused them to be nicknamed the Doo-dahs. Six other people had been dragged along. by Clayton's invited guests. He did not know them well . . . indeed, three of them he did not know at all . . . but they had brought wine and marijuana with them, so they were welcome.
"When God made Adam, or so the stories say,
He made his body from the green and grassy ground,
And then he put him in a garden right away,
Not in Chicago, in L.A. or New York Town.
So fare thee well, my love, I hope someday you'll go
To where the people make their lives upon the land.
And even though each one of them is city-born,
Deep down inside each one of them's a mountain man.
So I'm leaving you, my darling, leaving you today,
Leaving you unto your world of windowsills,
Of cold cement and streets and great big steel homes,
And I believe I'll be a'heading for the hills. . . ."
As the closing harmonica riff wound to its end, Peter nodded and said, "That's beautiful, Artie. And it's just so true, you know? We should all live up here in the country. Right, Dorcas?" He turned to her as he spoke, and found that her chin was resting on her breast and she was snoring softly.
"Well, that's a comment on your singing if I ever saw one, Artie!" Clayton snickered.
"She just had too much to drink," Lydia said. "And what's your excuse?"
He chose to ignore her as he said perfunctorily, "Great song, Artie, great song."
Artie smiled and nodded as the others muttered words of agreement, and a few other heads began to nod. "You wanna hear another one?" he asked hopefully.
No one answered at first, and then Deirdre said, "Oh, I do! Play that song about the guy . . . you know, the guy who's at the end of his rope . . . you know. . . "
"Sam McDougal's Blues?'" he asked.
"Yeah," she said, "that's it." She looked around for support of her request and saw more closing eyes. She looked back at Artie and said softly, "I think everybody's about to fall out."
"Yeah," he said glumly. "Looks that way."
"Why don't we go next door, like to the bedroom? You can serenade me."
Clayton suppressed his laughter as Artie and Deirdre left the room. They're like little kids, he thought, making a big deal out of getting laid. If Artie ever makes a move, that is.
"Great," Lydia muttered. "There's only two beds in this fucking place, and one of them just got taken."
"Lyd, my dear"—Clayton smiled—"you seem out of sorts. "
"Fuck you," she spat.
"And that's the problem, I suppose."
Nancy yawned loudly. "Clay, I think we better liven this group up a little. This is starting to feel like an old folks' home."
"She's right," Rebecca said. "It's too early to fall out. Let's go to Alex's for a little while." A series of moans arose from the company, and she added quickly, "Look, it's either Alex's or Charlie's, and Clay and Sean can't go to Charlie's."
"Neither can you," Sean pointed out. A year before, after a particularly riotous drunken spree, the three of them had been permanently expelled from the only other bar within easy driving distance.
She waved his objection away impatiently. "I could get in, no sweat. Charlie was just pissed at me because I was with you two."
"So go to Charlie's" Sean shrugged. "You wanna party and I just wanna go to sleep."
"Yeah," Clayton agreed. "Everybody who wants to go out drinking, go with Becky. Everybody who wants to fall out, stay here."
Rebecca, Lydia, and Nancy managed to arouse some degree of enthusiasm from most of the small company, and they began to vacate the trailer and head for the numerous vehicles that were parked at the foot of the path. Artie and Deirdre remained in the bedroom, and Peter looked at Dorcas with concern and said, "I don't know if I should leave her here like this . . ."
"She had too much to drink," Clayton said. "Who hasn't, sometime or another? Stuff a pillow under her head and don't worry about her, Pete. She'll wake up feeling like shit, is all."
"Yeah." He nodded uncertainly, then walked to the door and called out, "What do you think, Lyd? Okay to leave Dorcas passed out like this?"
"I think you treat her like she's made of glass or something," Lydia called back as she climbed into Russell's Volkswagen. "Come on, let's go, okay?"
Peter did as Clayton had suggested and then followed the others out into the cold darkness. From the bedroom came the soft sound of Artie's guitar. Sean rolled one final joint, and as he lighted it he looked at Clayton and asked, "Hey, what's with you, man?"
"What do you mean?"
"You look like really uptight."
Clayton shook his head. "Just waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
Clayton did not reply. Instead he listened as the engines of the automobiles rose and then faded into the distance. Then he sidled over to where Dorcas was lying and begun to unbutton her flannel shirt. Sean watched with disbelief. "Clay, what the hell are you doing?"
He chuckled. "Fulfilling a long-standing fantasy."
"Cut it out, damn it! You know what happened last—"
"Sean, shut up, will you? You'll wake her up." He frowned. "Shit. She's wearing a bra. This is gonna be tricky." Dorcas was lying on her side, and he was able to slide his hand beneath her shirt to her back and unhook her bra without awakening her. Then he gently rolled her over onto her back and pulled the bra up over her breasts. "Holy shit! Her and Lydia, their tits are like identical!"
"Clay, for Christ's sake!"
"Both starting to get those lines on the top, you know what I mean? I hate that. Always happens to girls with big tits, I guess."
"Clay, cut it out!" Sean was clearly concerned about the ramifications of what his friend was doing.
"Just relax," Clayton said. "Hey, you can have sloppy seconds, if you want." He pulled Dorcas's belt open, unbuttoned and unzipped her dungarees, and then began to pull them down.
At this point the girl's eyes fluttered and an inarticulate sound escaped her lips. Clayton pulled off his own pants and then began to massage her vulva and explore her interior with his grimy fingers. Her eyes opened wider. "What . . . what . . . ?"
"You've seduced me, you little fox," Clayton whispered, and he moved on top of her and inserted himself into her.
Dorcas awakened to find herself in Clayton's embrace as he plunged repeatedly into her. "What are you . . . Clay, what . . . ?"
"Don't try to pretend you don't remember." He smiled down at her. "As soon everybody else left to go drinking you came on to me like crazy."
"I . . . I did?" she asked. Worry and confusion were written on her face as she lay unresisting beneath him. I wouldn't do something like that . . . like this . . . would I?
"You sure did." Clayton panted as he approached climax. "It was like you were in heat or something. Don't you remember?"
"I . . . I guess so . . ." Dorcas had no experie
nce upon which to base a reaction. She knew that she did not want to have intercourse with Clayton, but she clearly was doing so. She did not remember initiating it, but he said she had, so it must have happened that way. She had only one sexual experience in her background, and that was brief, unpleasant, and two years earlier with a boy she never even saw anymore; and yet here she was, having sex with her sister's boyfriend while her best friend's boyfriend sat and watched.
She whimpered softly as Clayton squeezed her breasts and thrust himself into her, grunting, "Tight as a drum, tight as a drum . . ."
She frowned. How could I have said something like that? How could I be doing something like this? And did I see Mr. Schilder?
And did he turn into Vernon?
And was Mr. Patanjali in the cave?
She sighed as a tear rolled from the side of her eye. I don't know what I'm doing anymore, what I'm saying, what I'm thinking. I don't know, I just don't know. She closed her eyes and tried to think about something else, anything else, as minutes crept by like hours and Clayton pounded into her.
At last he emptied himself into her and then rolled off onto his side. "That was great, Dork, just great. Hey, don't say nothing to Lyd, okay? She'd be really pissed at you."
"No, I won't," she said quietly, her voice tremulous with repressed weeping. "I won't tell anybody."
"Atta girl." Clayton grinned. "It's been a long day and we got a lot to do tomorrow, so let's get some sleep, okay?"
Dorcas's fingers seemed to move spasmodically as she dressed herself and then lay back down on the floor, huddling onto her side.
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