The Deadly Percheron

by John Franklin Bardin

There was also a third group that kept partly separate, but also sometimes mixed with the shills and showgirls. Zozo, “the delovely Latin who lives with a boa constrictor,” was a member of this clique, as was a man named Barney Gorham who kept a shooting gallery. Barney interested me very much. He was a great ape of a man with smoothed-back, glistening black hair and a half-grown beard. As he walked his shoulders would sway involuntarily; watching him one was always conscious of the movement of muscles beneath his rough flannel shirt. He would give the impression of having money when first met; and yet if one talked to him for any length of time he would invariably try to borrow a dollar or two. He pretended to be a painter, and it was true that he did paint in his spare time. Several times, when he brought them to the All-Brite, I saw some of his daubs: badly designed seascapes, highly romanticized pastoral scenes and gaudy portraits of those of the showgirls he had slept with. For Barney was successful with the “ponies,” as the chorines were called. Usually, he had one or two girls with him, talking vivaciously, while he sat slumped in his chair glowering at the room.

  I called these last the “characters” and there were many of them, yet, of the three groups they were the most difficult to define and limit. A few of them were intellectuals, or pseudo-intellectuals, and what they were doing at Coney Island I could not understand. Others were freaks: dwarfs and bearded ladies, the pin-headed boy who was really a cretin yet was accepted as a member of this loosely-knit society – he was always accompanied by a large, motherly-looking woman with a monstrous goiter – a man who owned a motion picture theater and a girl who ran a photographer’s studio. I decided at last that what they all had in common was a sense of dissatisfaction. Both the “drifters” and the “artists” were content with their life, but the “characters” – although many of them were successful financially – were malcontents. They were not peculiar to Coney Island except in their concentration; you might find small groups such as these in the theatrical district of any Middle Western city. However widely they might be separated during the winter months, as each sought a way of earning a living (some by touring the South with a carnival, some by doing odd parts on Broadway or at Radio City, others by touting the racetracks or taking any “rube” job they could find), they always returned to this place in the summer, met at this cafeteria, considered this the center of their lives.

  I supposed it was only natural that after a time I came to be a part of this last group. John Brown was homeless, too, and like everyone else needed to feel that he belonged. It cost nothing to sit down at one of the tables that had been designed to seat four, but around which six or seven were sitting, and soon I found myself joining in the conversations. These, instead of being confined to carnival gossip as I had guessed they might be, were about almost anything. I was surprised at how learned Barney was, for example, and both amused and frightened at the thought that Zozo, who lived with a boa constrictor, had not only read Kant but also Fichte and Spinoza. One of the favorite topics of discussion was psychoanalysis (it usually came up when one of the group would remember the time when the Wild Man from Borneo with Sells-Floto – “a quiet type who liked Guy Lombardo and Wisconsin lager” – went berserk on the midway and killed three men – “the show did great business for the rest of the stand, we made all the dailies and that year we went way over our nut”), and I astonished them with my knowledge of the field. While I restrained my memory of my past life, I seemed to have no compunction about using information I had gained during that life – in fact, one of the reasons why I was soon so fascinatedly a member of this odd group was because I was pleased to find so many neurotic personalities at one time. The All-Brite was a veritable game preserve for the psychiatric sportsman. Yet by the time I had worked in the cafeteria a month, I knew several of the “characters” well enough to consider them my friends, and also to forget that I had once considered them eccentric.

  Sonia A start was one of my friends. She entered the cafeteria at the same time each night, a few minutes after twelve. She would walk between the tables, speaking to this person or that, finally making her way to the counter where her order was always the same: a pot of black coffee. Then she would go sit with Barney or Zozo.

  I joined Barney’s table more often than I did the others, and Sonia was the reason for this. She seldom had much to say, but one never noticed her silence. When I was near her, I felt her presence and it was far more stimulating than words. Yet she had few of the standard hallmarks of womanly beauty. She was tall, and her features were irregular – she was not even especially fastidious. Often she was without lipstick or powder, sometimes the sloppy shirts and slacks she wore were badly in need of a pressing.

  I am certain that there were times when Sonia did not know how she would manage to scrape enough money together to live the week. She was usually between jobs. And it was at these times that she would change from a listener to the most talkative of all those present. She had a marvelous fund of stories about the carnival folk, and she would talk politics or sex or a theory of art for hours on end with Zozo or myself or anyone who would argue with her, interrupting the discussion frequently to get up from the table, corner a prosperous-seeming friend who had just come in the door, speak long and earnestly with him for a few minutes, borrow money from him. It was as if she could not carry off the necessary wheedling, the tale of sudden, unexpected misfortune but certain better luck to come, without first plunging into the fever of argument. And when I considered the content of these conversations later, I realized that they were only word games, intellectual puzzles that aborted thought.

  Sonia and Barney were among the more complex of the “characters.” There were others more obviously and conventionally neurotic. One of these was the Preacher, an extremely tall man who dressed in cowboy boots, riding breeches, a flannel shirt and a Stetson hat. He would stride into the cafeteria, walk up to the first people he encountered and begin to exhort them to leave the city.

  “Go find yourself a home on the plains!” he would shout. “A free place in a wide space where you won’t be bothered with no taxicabs tootling their crazy horns at you, where you can cross a street and take your time – Gawd’s Country!” He would orate like this on his one and only subject, the West, oblivious to the fact that no one listened, until suddenly for no visible reason he would stop talking, stare belligerently about for a moment and then stalk angrily out. I never saw him sit down at a table or join in a conversation even with the “drifters,” nor did I ever meet anyone who knew anything about him.

  I would sit with these people for hours every night, afterwards going home to my sleeping room not to leave it until late in the afternoon of the next day. I cannot say I looked forward to these social hours (they were not in any way comparable to the chosen leisure of a healthy man; they were only another form of my somnambulism). When I was not actually asleep, I submerged my personality in the mechanical compulsions of my job, or in an equally mechanical participation in this society of misfits. It was a complete negation of everything that had gone before.

  I suppose it was inevitable that I should sleep with Sonia, although I can say honestly that at no time did I calculate it. First, we fell into the habit of sitting next to each other, an accident in the beginning and then a not unpleasant institution. Later, we would walk home together in the early hours of the morning – she lived near me. During these walks we talked little, but there existed a common feeling between us which I cannot define except to say that when I was near her in this way was the closest I ever came to awaking. Then one night by mutual consent, without a word of love being spoken, we walked by her boarding house and went to my room. From then on, although it was never a constant procedure and there were many nights when she went to her place and I went to mine, we considered this a part of our relationship and I believe we both found solace in it.

  One night Sonia did not come to the All-Brite and I walked home alone. This, in itself, was not unusual. Sonia often missed a night a week at the cafeter
ia and I never questioned her as to her whereabouts on these nights. I cannot say that I felt lonely that night either; as a matter of fact it was a beautiful night in early September, there was a bloodred harvest moon and I took a long walk along Surf Avenue, exploring all the many side streets I had never ventured down before.

  Coney Island is a terrifyingly empty neighborhood late at night. By two o’clock in the morning most of the concessions are closed, except for a few dance halls and bars and one merry-go-round that goes all night. A few roistering sailors staggered, yipped and brawled a short way up the street that night, the three sheets and gaudy sideshow signs gleamed red in the rich moonlight, the twisted skeleton of the roller coaster stretched its conjectural latticework up towards the pitch-black sky.

  I felt exhilarated, almost as if I had been drinking. I remember I stood in front of a fun house, the façade of which featured roly-poly clowns with starchy faces and huge grinning lips, and bent double with laughter at my own crazy reflection in a distorting mirror. That, I know, was the first time I had looked into a mirror with equanimity. But the distortion of this flawed surface was so grotesque that it relieved the natural horror of my face, and by making it ridiculous enabled me for an instant to accept it. I was still laughing at the insanely contorted self I had seen, as I turned down my own street and started for my rooms.

  Except for the main stem, Coney Island streets are dark at nights – and in 1944 they were doubly dark because of the blackout. Still the moon supplied a neon light of its own. I had walked this street many times and I had grown to like its ramshackle air; even the occasional rumble of the elevated seemed reassuring. Then, all of a sudden, I was afraid.

  I do not know for how long I had been aware of footsteps sounding behind me, but at that moment I realized that they did not belong to a casual pedestrian but rather to someone who was following me. Trembling, I stood aside to let this person pass – sure that he would not.

  When I turned around no one was there.

  I was childishly panic-stricken. I experienced an irrational attack of terror. I remember that I put my hand up to my face to feel my scar, automatically, as if it were in some way connected with my phobia. I stood there for several minutes, holding my breath, feeling my heart hammer at my ribs and my blood freeze in my veins, ready to flee at the sight of a shadow or the sound of an echo. But no one came.

  I started for home again.

  And the sound of footsteps followed me! Whoever it was must have hidden in a doorway when I stopped and turned around. On the blacked-out street I did not discover his presence. I knew now that whoever it was intended to do me harm – why else hide? I walked fast.

  The person behind me walked fast, too. I began to run. He ran. I ran as fast as I could, and by then I was only a block from my house. If I could reach my door, would I be safe? All I could hear was the sound of those feet. He seemed not ten paces behind me. Then I became aware of an automobile coming down the street towards me. I ran out into the street in front of it, waving my arms frantically to flag it down. I could see that its headlights were mere glowing slits, but I preferred the known danger of being run over to the unknown danger the footsteps implied…

  The last person I thought of before the car hit me was Sonia. For some reason her hair was slicked back like a man’s and she had a mustache. I hated her.

  SIX

  Between Two Worlds

  There are times in anyone’s life when it is possible to stand aside and see what is past, as well as what is present, with an objectivity that is unnatural if not godlike. A few minutes after I was knocked down in the street near my rooming house, I came to in what was to me then – at that moment – a strange bed in a strange room. It was a small room, clean, but cheaply furnished. The door stood partly open and through it I could see a dimly lighted hallway and a banister. Over the dresser, in the place where a mirror would normally be, several cheap reproductions of famous paintings had been thumbtacked to the plaster: a Van Gogh, a Cézanne and a Degas. I was pleased to see them since these are my favorite painters. All this I perceived in the foggy instant between full consciousness and the depths of unconsciousness.

  Then, as I struggled to awake fully, the recent past surged in on me: I felt a sharp, unyielding pain at the base of my brain, I heard again the roar of a motor racing wildly and felt the rush of wind as a bulk – huge and menacing – hurled past me, caught at me, threw me down. At this I was greatly confused. Several conflicting images appeared to my mind’s eye, many faces looked down at me: one, that of a man with a mustache, another, a dwarf’s face underneath a bowler hat. Others I could not quite descry. Then hands lifted me, and, uncannily, it seemed as if I were lifted twice at the same time – as in a double-printed motion picture you see the same action duplicated, two sets of images doing the same thing – and voices said different things, different voices! One said, “He’s dead! Get the photo, quickly!” Another cried, “Oh, I saw it happen! Is he hurt badly? Here, let me help you. He lives only down the street – we can take him there!”

  Then the struggle ended, one set of memories won out. At the same time I recognized the little man who was sitting on the foot of my bed. I was wryly dismayed. He was Eustace.

  While I stared at him, I remembered that I had become frightened in the street, that I had run into the path of an automobile and that Sonia had come along right afterwards and helped to carry me down the street and upstairs to my room. But what was the other memory I had awakened with, the one that had contested unequally, for a glimmering, with the more recent past? Was I remembering what had happened in the subway station? And what was Eustace doing here? Was he the one who had been following me?

  As I looked at him, I realized that I wanted badly to know the answers to these questions. Perhaps, he could tell me? If I played it right, I might learn something. The thing to do was to pretend that I was confused. I thought about it and arrived at a plan that seemed brilliant. I would act as if I had suffered another attack of amnesia. I would say I had forgotten everything that had happened recently. By this tactic I would put him on the defense. And, if he had been following me with a purpose, I would find it out.

  Eustace was not wearing fancy clothes this time: his suit was conservatively cut and a carefully brushed bowler hat rested on his knee. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “You could have been hurt bad, chum!” he said. “That car gave you a nasty clip. I had to come up to make sure you were all right, didn’t I?”

  His voice was still the same mechanical-sounding guttural, but it was not pitched sarcastically as it had been when I first heard it. In fact, he was smiling uneasily, smoothing his hat with one hand, patting his knee with the other. He was trying to be ingratiating.

  “I saw you over on the Avenue,” he went on. “I’ve been wanting to see you for a long time but I never expected to find a swell like you here! I’ve been wanting to talk to you. I followed you and you started to run. Before I could catch up with you” – he glanced down at his short legs – “you ran out into the street in front of that jalopy.”

  I rubbed my head and my hand came away bloody. I had knocked loose a hastily contrived bandage. Eustace jumped to his feet and made clucking noises with his tongue. He came over to me and helped me tie the bandage tighter.

  “It’s only a deep scratch,” he said, “but you better lie still for a day or so. You can’t tell, from a lick like that it might give concussion!”

  I could see that my plan was working. The little man was rattled. He had not expected to find me suffering from amnesia and, now that he surmised this was the case, he did not know what to say. I was not sure that I would learn anything from questioning him, but I could at least find out what sort of a game he had been playing on Jacob. I was curious about that.

  “What’s he been doing? Picking at it?”

  Sonia was standing in the doorway. She held a basin of water in her hands and she was smiling. Her eyes were shadowed, her hair gleamed d
arkly in the poor light, her slim figure was silhouetted against the brighter illumination that came from the hallway – I liked her looks. Tonight she was wearing a loose-fitting Russian blouse and flannel trousers that looked well on her long legs. I regretted that, until Eustace left, I would have to pretend that I had forgotten her.

  “Why don’t you introduce me to your friend, John?” she asked. “He was very kind to wait to be sure you were all right after that awful bump you had. Particularly after the driver left you in the street like that!”

  Eustace was watching me expectantly, waiting to be introduced. Sonia was regarding me solicitously. I decided to embarrass the little man as much as I could.

  “This is Eustace,” I said. “A leprechaun.”

  Sonia took it calmly, only barely raising an eyebrow. “Irish?” she asked. I could see she thought I was joking. Maybe I was.

  “No, he is an American leprechaun.”

  Eustace was discomfited. He squirmed. “I been meaning to tell you about that,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I’ve been wanting to see you. I want to tell you how that was.”

  “What’s his last name, John?” Sonia asked.

  “I don’t know his last name,” I said.

  “It’s Mather,” said Eustace. He squirmed some more.

  “Eustace Mather?” She raised her eyebrow a little higher.

  “No, lady,” said the little man. “My name ain’t Eustace, it’s Felix. Felix Mather.” He looked at me unhappily. “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said.

  At this point Sonia put her arm around me. I liked that. “You’ve never spoken of Felix before, John,” she said. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Business acquaintance, lady,” said Felix. “Eustace was my trade name at one time.”

  She pulled me to her and brushed her lips across my forehead. “I like you, Felix,” she said to the little man. “John should have let me meet you sooner.”