by Bill Crider
During all of this, no one said a word. But no one had to. I was getting the message.
I thought they might start kicking me again, but just then a car turned into the lot, sweeping its headlights over them. They faded back into the darkness, and I could hear them moving away. I guess it hadn't been their Ford in my parking spot.
The car that had turned in came to a stop, and I heard a door slam. I still didn't feel much like getting up.
Before long, there was a man standing over me. He had what appeared to be a normal-looking haircut, but when he bent over to get a better look at me, a ponytail fell over his shoulder. I couldn't really tell in the bad light and in my feeble condition, but it looked as if it might have been dyed blue.
"Hey, man, you OK?" he said.
"M-ugg-unmph," I said.
"Sure, man. I'll help you get up." He reached down and put his hands under my armpits.
He pulled up, and I tried to stand. I thought I could manage all right as long as I didn't put any weight on the knee. I stuck out a hand and leaned on the car.
"How you feelin', man?"
I took a deep breath. It hurt, but I didn't think I had any broken ribs. Cracked, maybe. "Like six pounds of shit in a five pound bag," I said.
"Yeah. I know what you mean. Did they get your money?"
I told him they hadn't taken my money. "You got here just in time."
"You want me to call an ambulance? The cops, maybe?"
I opened the car door and sat in the seat, my legs sticking out into the parking lot. "No, thanks," I said. "I think I'll just go on home. You scared them off before they did any real damage." I twisted around, which hurt like hell, and took my billfold out of my back pocket. "See? Money all still here. And the cops'd never catch those three."
"Yeah, you got that right. You sure you're all right, though? You don't look so good."
"No blood, right? I must be OK if there's no blood."
He didn't look convinced, but he said, "Well, if that's the way you want it."
"That's the way I want it. Go on in and enjoy the band. They're really cooking tonight."
"They're cookin' every night," he said. "I guess I'll go, then." He started on across the lot. He looked back a couple of times, and I waved a jaunty hand at him. Then he was inside.
I just sat there for a while, maybe fifteen minutes. A couple of other cars came in, a couple left. No one paid me any attention. The three goons didn't come back.
Finally I got myself turned around and completely inside the car. I tested my right leg. I could work the accelerator all right, so I cranked up the engine and drove away from there, hauling what was left of me back to the Island.
8
I suppose I could have gone back inside The Sidepocket then and tried to beat the truth out of Ferguson, but right at the moment I couldn't have beat the truth out of Pee Wee Herman. I wondered why Ferguson hadn't picked a nicer way of telling me to lay off instead of being so stupid and obvious. After all, I might have believed his lies. How was he to know I hadn't? Now I'd be certain to follow up on him.
I got back to the Island and drove to the house. Nameless was nowhere in sight. Just like a cat, thinking only of himself. Who was going to help me get up the stairs?
I managed to swivel around and get my legs out the car door. Then I put my left foot down and stood up. Now all I had to do was hop over to the door. I managed to do that, too.
I looked around in the darkness for something to use as a cane or a crutch. I had a cane that I'd used years before, but it was somewhere up on the second floor where it was doing me no good at all.
There was a piece of an old one-by-four lying on the ground by the steps. I leaned down, balanced myself carefully with my hand on a step, and picked up the board. It was a little too short, but it would have to do.
I tried a couple of steps in the yard with it before attempting the stairs. If I didn't put my right foot down too solidly, I could walk without screaming. I was a pretty tough guy, all right.
Getting up the steps wasn't easy, but I did it. Just as I got the door open, Nameless streaked by me and into the house. Typical. Now he'd expect to be fed. There were times when I wished I were a cat. It must be nice to live a life of total irresponsibility. All you had to do was find some sucker to feed you.
Nameless meowed as I came hobbling in through the door. Clearly I wasn't living up to my obligation to get food in the bowl the instant he wanted it.
"Sorry," I said. "This is as fast as it gets. You want food, go find a rat."
Nameless meowed again, clearly not impressed with my excuse. I ripped open a bag of Tender Vittles and poured it in his bowl. He stabbed his head in as soon as I began pouring and grabbed a mouthful, purring now.
I hobbled on up to the second floor. Very slowly. When I got to the bed, I sat down and tossed away the board. The knee was hurting like hell, and my ribs weren't much better. I lay back on the bed, and against all the odds I went to sleep almost immediately.
~ * ~
Nameless woke me up. He jumped on the bed, walked up on my chest, and howled. It was completely dark, and I had no idea what time it was. I looked at my watch, punching the button that illuminated the numbers. 4:04. "Nameless," I said, "you can always be replaced."
"Wr-o-r-r-r-r." He stepped off my chest and jumped down from the bed.
I sat up. It wasn't so bad. I fumbled around on the floor until I located the board, and then stood up. That wasn't so bad, either, but it was bad enough. Nevertheless, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
I located the light switch. Nameless preceded me out of the room and down the stairs, his tail high. "I hope you have a nice time," I said as I opened the door on the first floor.
Nameless didn't say anything. He just left.
I went back upstairs. I hoped Dino had plenty of money. A thousand dollars wasn't going to be nearly enough. I'd earned that much with the knee. It was time to increase my rates.
I made it back upstairs, and this time I got undressed before I fell into the bed and into sleep.
~ * ~
I didn't even consider the usual morning run the next day, but the knee wasn't permanently damaged. It was a little swollen and tender, but that was all. It would never be as good as new, but then it hadn't been as good as new in a long time. The swelling would go down in a day or two, and I'd be back on the seawall in a day or two more. My ribs and stomach were sore, too, and I had some interesting bruises beginning to take shape. Soon they'd all merge into one big, colorful, liverish splotch, roughly in the shape of Australia, and almost as large. Nothing was broken, though; nothing was even cracked. The guys who had worked me over were real professionals.
The knee was the main thing, but if I was careful, it would be all right, or as all right as it had been since my last appearance on a football field.
After we'd wowed 'em in high school, Dino, Ray, and I had gone our separate athletic ways. Dino wanted to get away from the humid summers and winters of the Gulf Coast to a place where there were no palm trees and where he could see snow in the winter. As a result, he'd wound up in Lubbock, playing middle linebacker for Texas Tech, where he became an all-conference player his senior year. Meanwhile, I went to The University of Texas at Austin.
Ray, on the other hand, didn't have much choice. A couple of the Southwest Conference schools were beginning to let the first blacks on their teams at about that time, but Ray wasn't quite good enough to be in that small, elite number. He went instead to Prairie View A&M, an all black school that had neither the academic nor the athletic prestige of the big-time programs in the state, some of which might have taken Ray if they'd only known how good he was going to become.
But they didn't, so he was stuck. But he got bigger, and at the same time he got faster. He led the nation in interceptions his senior year, and Houston drafted him. He was in a car accident right after the draft. Some buddy who also got picked having celebrated a little too long and too hard was driving, not
that it mattered to Ray.
His legs healed fine, but in the process he lost a step. Not even that much. Half a step. But it was enough. He could run me or Dino into the ground, but that didn't matter. In the pros that half step can make all the difference. Ray lost it.
I lost it a lot sooner. It was one of those great days for football in Austin, about sixty degrees, not a cloud to be seen, that unidentifiable smell of fall in the air. A stadium full of screaming fans.
I went into the Texas Tech game leading the nation in rushing as a sophomore. People were already talking about the Heisman, if not that year, then the next one for sure. Agents were already making discreet and not-so-discreet inquiries. There was not a doubt in anyone's mind that I would be a millionaire after two more seasons.
Unless, of course, something disastrous happened.
The first three quarters of the Tech game went just fine. I'd gained over a hundred yards already, though it hadn't been easy. A lot of it had come on one play, a sweep around the right end. I'd broken loose at my own forty and gone untouched into the end zone. The rest of it had been ground out two or three yards at a time, and as often as not the one on top of me when they unstacked the tacklers was Dino. He was double-tough that day.
In the fourth quarter we were leading, twenty-one to eighteen, and we had the ball on the fifty. The quarterback called the sweep around the right end again.
I took the handoff and cut back, running parallel to the line of scrimmage. I could see the sideline in front of me, and just then a hole opened up to my left. I planted my right foot to make the cut; that's when Dino hit me.
I don't know to this day where he came from. I know I sure as hell didn't see him. I've watched the film since, and I still can't figure it out.
At any rate, he came in low, sailing through the air, and he was coming fast. When his helmet hit my knee, it sounded like a baseball bat hitting a watermelon. I've heard at least one guy who was sitting in the top row of the stadium say he was sickened by the sound.
Mainly what I remember after that is rolling around on the grass--there was real grass in Memorial Stadium then--and thinking that I'd been shot or something. I remember seeing Dino standing above me, his helmet off. I think he was crying, but he's never mentioned it, and neither have I.
A couple of operations and lots of rehab later, I could walk just fine. But I never played football again.
I tried. It took nearly two years to get ready, but in my senior year I went out for practice. The coaches gave me every chance. But it was no use. I was slow. I couldn't cut. And worst of all, I knew that if anyone hit me on that knee again, especially if they hit me as hard as Dino had, I'd be hobbling for the rest of my life. If I was lucky. If I wasn't, I'd be a cripple.
I was bitter about it for a while. Who wouldn't be? I wasn't cut out to be one of those sunshiney guys who talks about how everything happened for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
At least they let me keep my scholarship. I took all the right courses and graduated with my class, which was more than I could say for most of the guys I'd played with.
I started law school, and then dropped out, but a lawyer I'd gotten to know asked me to do a few jobs for him. It turned out that I was pretty good at investigations, especially finding people, a job that paid pretty well in the run-away days of the early '70s.
Dino and I had lost touch, until I finally came back to Galveston to look for Jan. He'd been there all along, joined by Ray after his brief fling with the pros (two weeks of training camp was as long as he lasted), and there they still were.
Jan had been in the stands the day my knee had been ruined. She was just a kid then, and she and I had laughed about it in the hospital afterward, about how I'd have to stop being a dumb jock and learn a useful trade. I'd learned a trade, all right, but it hadn't been useful to her. I wondered if I'd ever see her again, or if I'd ever stop wondering what had happened to her. Now that I'd become involved in the search for Sharon Matthews, my mind was off my own problems for a change; the job was good for me. As long as I managed to stay in one piece.
Since I wasn't going to be doing any running, I stayed in bed until I got bored, about nine o'clock. Then I got up and hopped over to the chiffonnier. The cane was leaning up against one side of it, the same cane I'd bought when I got out of the hospital in Austin.
I'd been young and romantic, so I bought a romantic cane, hand-carved in Mexico, with a peacock and his long, colorful tail taking up most of the space, the design cut into the black varnished wood. What I'd liked best was the fact that the brass tip and the brass handle could be screwed off, the center of the cane removed, and the whole thing assembled into a pool cue. I'd never used the cue, but I liked the idea of having it.
With the help of the cane, I walked over to the window nearest my bed. There were windows on every wall, the house having been built to take advantage of the Gulf breezes in a time when air-conditioning wasn't even a dream in the mind of some crazed inventor.
The sill of the window looked like the sill of every other window in the room, but it wasn't. There was a little catch under the front lip. I pressed the catch, and the sill lifted up and folded back on hidden hinges.
In the hollow underneath was my pistol.
As a young, romantic investigator who had once bought a cane that could be made into a pool cue, I'd decided that I should have an appropriate weapon. I'd finally found one I liked, a Mauser parabellum. You might call it a Luger, but when Mauser began to make the gun again they discovered that somehow they didn't own the rights to that name, which doesn't appear on the pistol at all. It looks just like the original, though, except that it has a slimmer, longer barrel. The one I have uses 7.65 mm cartridges, but I never intended to shoot water buffalo with it. A 7.65 will bring a man down if you shoot him in the right place.
Of course I never intended to shoot anyone.
I took the leather sheepskin-lined case out of its hiding place and lowered the sill, pressing down until I heard the catch click. I took the case over to the bed, sat down, and opened the zipper. The Mauser looked just as deadly as ever.
I got dressed then, jeans and sweatshirt, and took the pistol into the kitchen where I laid it on a small wooden table. I had some gun oil in the cabinet, along with some rags and a swab. I got them out and went back to the table, leaned the cane against it, and sat in a chair.
The pistol was easy to disassemble. It took about a minute and a half. I cleaned it carefully, oiled it, and then put it back together.
Parabellum. The word meant for war. Well, if I met those guys from the parking lot again, it was going to be war, all right.
I stuck the gun in the waistband of my jeans and went back into the bedroom. There was a box of cartridges in the hiding place, too. I got them out and loaded the clip with seven of them, thought about it for a minute, jacked one into the chamber, and put the eighth into the clip. I didn't like to store them in the clip. I had a theory that it weakened the spring.
After I'd done all that, naturally I felt like a fool. I'd never shot anyone, and I really didn't think I was going to start now. I'd been to the firing range often enough, though not in the last year or so, and I was really pretty good with the Mauser; but I hoped I wouldn't have to use it.
Nevertheless, I felt better just having it around.
As I was stumping around the brass bed, trying to get the covers in some kind of order, I realized that I'd slept better last night than I had in quite some time.
Maybe I should go out and get beaten up more often.
Or maybe it was just that getting my mind off Jan was improving my sleep.
After the bed was made I went and sat on the sagging couch and tried to think about what to do next. The logical thing seemed to be to find out a little more about Chuck Ferguson. So I called Dino.
Ray answered, and then put Dino on. I could hear the Donahue Show in the background. "Phil got any weird ones on today?" I said.
"Just a bu
nch of people that claim they've been kidnapped by funny-looking guys in UFOs. Nothing new in that." His voice sounded a little ragged. "But you didn't call to talk about what's on TV, did you?"
"I went to The Sidepocket last night," I said. "Talked to Ferguson. I'd like to know a little more about him."
"Why? He know something?"
It could have been my imagination, but I thought there was an edge of real curiosity in his questions. "Says he doesn't know a thing," I said. "But you never can tell. Can you find out anything about him?"
"Gimme an hour. I'll call you."
"No, I'll call you. I'm looking into some other stuff, too.”
I didn't say what the other stuff was, and I didn't mention the little scuffle of the previous evening. It wasn't that I didn't trust Dino, exactly; it was just that nothing was making sense and I didn't think it would be to my advantage to tell him everything right then. Even if it did mean putting off asking for that raise.
"What about Sharon?" Dino said. The edge was still there, even more pronounced if anything.
"I'll let you know as soon as I find out anything concrete. Right now, I'm just poking sticks in holes, seeing if anything jumps out at me."
"Call me back anytime after an hour, then."
"Right," I said. We hung up.
I realized then that I'd forgotten about Nameless. I went downstairs to let him in. It was easier going down than I thought it would be. The cane was much better than the board. I opened the door, and Nameless fell in as if his head had been pressed against it.
"Sorry," I said.
He looked at me reproachfully while I got his food.
I stood and watched him eat. Then we went upstairs, where he proceeded to jump up on the couch and groom himself, licking himself all over, and then biting himself between the toes. Watching him made my tongue feel nasty.