The immediate question on the dock (it’s low tide and I climb a ladder to the deck) is what now? I look for my car, though I know they took it since they took the keys, with that funny promise by Loomer to return it to Hertz in Bangor. In any case, it’s gone. I must learn the transportation facilities in Black Harbor. Civilized questions return. Food, shelter, sleep, and how do I get from one place to another? It all starts with money. Of which I have some. The precise figure is sixty-five bucks, plus a Master Card, a Texaco card and a Mobil. Also the return air ticket from Bangor. I have what I need to get home.
But in a state of confusion. It’s close to five, which limits what I can accomplish in the rest of today. My pack contains clothes, with my notebook, shaving and toilet stuff. Last time in Black Harbor I stayed at the Inn. The Inn is close by, near the yellow building with the general store.
The telephone on the dock by the pumps is out of order. There’s another in the general store next to the post office. Garden hoses, scythes and sickles, a lumbery smell. I forget why I need a telephone, then remember. Hello Hertz? Oddly enough the reply is quick and affirmative. The fellas, good guys after all, returned my car. Good guys after all? Do you believe that? Should I feel a chill in my spine for the innate goodness of my fellow man amid the deadly tricks? If civilization is a surface watch out for the bumps and hollows.
In any case though, I need to go to Bangor, so as to use my ticket. How do you get from Black Harbor to Bangor? Is there a bus? I didn’t think so.
If you stick around, the store man says, maybe you can hitch a ride tomorrow on the truck. Another night in the Black Harbor Inn, better than the house on Stump Island anyway. Remember the uncomfortable bed, the old pine bedstead, the down home wall paper, by God it’s the same room. Get dinner at the hamburger store and back to the coastal quiet of nautical sleep. Having had a little more nautical atmosphere than I need. Returning here tends to eliminate the in-between and comments on the whole venture with something like a sneer. The other time I was beginning a hunt. Now like Odysseus I’m trying to go home. I have accomplished what I intended, but without certain rewards I had no right to expect, and there’s a sick feeling in the air. I need to analyze that sick feeling, since my mission was such a success. We got the child back, we eliminated the father, and now child, mother, and grandfather are safe where they belong. Only I, loyal Davey, ran into a snag, but I’m out of it now. What’s sick about it?
Say it’s my touchy reaction to being scared and humiliated. Ego hurt when they put me on trial and left me on the island. Shouldn’t take it personally, they were beaten and only getting back what they could. I know that. It’s something else. The sight of Oliver Quinn slipping or shot down the waterfall, a renewable shock, I replay it in my head. Enraptured with the horror. I caught that moment in the act, a knife slicing into the neck of time and I saw the blood of the universe. Now it stains our good fortune or separates me from it. I am being mocked. By whom? The god? Is Oliver Quinn in your way, shall I bump him off for you? The fellas, good guys both, with their mock trial. The universe, reading my mind and giving me what it thinks I deserve.
Blackmail, holding me symbolically responsible for Oliver Quinn’s death. That’s why I can’t complain to the police or file a lawsuit. If I filed a lawsuit the death of Oliver Quinn would become known. Inquiries would follow. Millerites would testify according to their view of the universe.
I hear the bell buoy again in the night, and the bed is no less uncomfortable than before. In the morning it’s the woman with long hair serving again and sun through the curtains of the breakfast room. The truck to Bangor, gee it’s already gone. It left at six while you were asleep, the rest you surely needed. Inventive Davey will have to find another way to Bangor.
Are there taxis in this part of the world? Yes, if you pay. A taxi will go anywhere if you pay enough. In this case it would be double the distance because you’d have to summon the taxi from Bangor before it could take you to Bangor. An elderly fat man in a business suit intervenes. You looking for a lift, sonny?
I’m trying to get to Bangor.
Well I’m heading for Augusta capital of this state but I could drop you at Bucksport where you might pick up another ride to Bangor if you so incline.
Well thank you, it beats sitting on my ass in Black Harbor.
The man’s car is the latest, its cost high, its motor silent. Its springs and shocks absorb the rocky back roads and convert them into waves. We glide cruisingly across the fields and down the dips and over the inlets and tidal runs of the Penobscot countryside. The man talks. His name is Jerome Turnbull. His face hangs down around his mouth. He requires my story, and I tell him all except what I’d rather not. Therefore I leave out the kidnapping and the death of Oliver Quinn. I leave out Miller and my trial on the island. What’s left I tell him fully, patched for coherence. He doesn’t see the gaps and is satisfied. So, he says, the bottom line is you’re a professor?
He, he tells me, is a professional troubleshooter. You got troubles to shoot, I’ll come and shoot em for you, haw. He’s spent the last three days shooting troubles on the dock at Black Harbor. Told them what they need and who to hire for it.
He asks me do I like his car, and I say fine. More pleasanter than a airplane, won’t you say? and I says yes, more pleasanter than an airplane. He says I can save money if I don’t use my ticket. Go with him to Augusta, down by the turnpike ramp I can hitchhike all the way to Cincinnati in cars as good as his and be home in no time. Then I can turn in my ticket, get my money back, and I’m home without spending no money at all.
Not only that, there’s valuable social experience to be gained from hitchhiking, the people you meet, an education not in no university or book. Himself, Jerome Turnbull, never drives without picking up a hitchhiker. He asks about their lives and they tell him and he learns something just like today, being as he never knew no black professors before. Never knew what they was like, but from now on when someone says black professor he’ll remember how polite and soft-spoken you was.
So, he says, not to twist your arm but I strongly advise you to save that airline ticket and ride with me to Augusta where I’ll show you where to hitchhike and guarantee you’ll meet interesting people and add to your life memories you’ll never forget.
I think, No way. No way will I give up Harry’s comfortable airline ticket for the American adventure of hitchhiking, to save Harry’s money not mine, but I’m not counting on the perverse grumbling inside me about something, how I have been treated or Harry or what. At Bucksport, which I recognize from the signs, Jerome Turnbull doesn’t speak. I wait to see when he’ll tell me. He cuts across to the suspension bridge on Route 1, leaving Bucksport behind. Then he says, I see you’re taking my advice.
You mean that was Bucksport? I say, pretending.
Good decision. You’ll get lots of good rides in Augusta.
He quiets down and the rest of the way is mostly flat across fields and through villages in the dreamy silence of automobile trips. Coming into Augusta he livens up. Explains where he’ll take me, the best place for a ride. Says how much he learned from me a black professor, a lesson in race relations he’ll never forget. Hopes I learned something too, like it’s some specific point he has in mind. Good luck, sonny, he says.
Nine out of ten cars go by without stopping. Then ninety-nine out of a hundred, and I wonder if there are any odds at all. Also what Jerome Turnbull the troubleshooter didn’t say, like what murderous kooks pick up hitchhikers even in peaceful Maine.
It’s middle day, the air cool, the sun blinds the pavement. At last a car stops. I run to catch up, a two-door with three people. A woman steps out so I can get into the back with another woman. All three are women. I’m relieved, women are less likely to be murderers. Thirties or late twenties. Jeans, lots of color. Laughing, residue of a joke before I came along. Where to, soldier? they ask me. Cincinnati, wow that’s far. We’re going to Rochester. You want to go to Rochester with us?
&
nbsp; It’s on the way, I say, if you can stand me that long.
We’re going to stop the night at a motel, they warn me. You can hitch another ride there if you want.
Stopping’s fine with me, I say.
My name is June, the driver says. This here’s Veena and that’s Minnie in back with you.
Glad to meet you, June, Veena, and Minnie. June the driver has short black hair. She has a small face with thin features and sharp eyes, looking smart and businesslike. Veena in the passenger seat has tumbling blonde curls, chubby cheeks, and a smiley face. Minnie in back keeping her distance from me is big. She wears glasses and has a sweatshirt with the words, DON’T MESS WITH ME, GO TO COLLEGE INSTEAD. She stares out the window and I can’t tell whether she finds everything funny or disgusting.
As a trio, they’re boisterous. Who am I? I keep the professor hidden as long as I can. They wish I came from the ghetto, sorry I don’t. I don’t use crack, either. I hope I have a girlfriend, but the baby came from somebody else. Miller calls himself God. You never heard of Miller who calls himself God? You never heard of God?
Minnie makes wry jokes for the others to laugh at. June is intent on driving. Veena laughs when she doesn’t know what’s going on. You’re cute, Veena says. The others agree, I’m cute.
And what do you do, you women? I say.
We’re waitresses.
And why are three waitresses driving from Maine to Rochester on a Saturday in the middle of spring?
Funeral, they say.
The mood is not my idea of funereal, although I know funerals produce different moods in different societies. For a while I don’t know if they’re going to the funeral or coming back. Then it appears they are returning home, which means the funeral was in Maine. I catch no mention of a deceased.
They learn all about me, the things I did not tell Jerome Turnbull. The kidnapping, the man down the waterfall, the trial for my life on Stump Island. Judy Field too. Wow, they say.
Veena giggles. What color is Judy? she asks.
Hush Veena, they say, but I don’t mind. Same as you, I say.
And what’s the nature of your relationship? Minnie asks. She’s the big one with glasses. Also, I now realize, the one the others consider most intelligent and best educated. She did time at a college in upper New York State.
Ambiguous, I reply.
Are you intimate hee hee with her? Veena asks.
Ignore her, June says.
I wish I were, I say. Tell them what they want to know. Strangers I’ll never see again, who cares? Maybe a stranger can see things I can’t though clear as day before my nose.
Have you made that wish known to her? Minnie says.
She knows what I want.
And still says no? Veena says. She’s crazy.
There’s always something coming up, I say. If it’s not the kidnapping of her baby it’s the death of her former boyfriend.
Snack stop, a change of places, now Minnie drives, June is in the passenger seat, Veena the blonde is behind with me. She keeps pressing the heels of her hands together like an exercise.
You’re cute, she says.
June asks, How come you didn’t use that air ticket to go home if it’s not your money you’re saving?
I don’t know, I really don’t know. Minnie answers for me. He’s fed up, she says. After all he’s gone through with no reward. He’s fed up taking things from what’s his name, Harry?
Is that it? Veena says. You want a reward?
Dinner stop early, a family restaurant chain. All over the country the rest rooms are back in the same corner to the right. My three waitresses observe Sue who’s our server for tonight. She’s got too many tables is her problem, June says. She’s inexperienced, Minnie says. Should we give her advice? Veena says. Let her swim, Minnie says. Survival of the fittest, if she doesn’t improve she’ll get fired.
Minnie is studying me across the table. Thinking. Back in the car she says, You’ve been meeting up these god people, maybe you should meet a goddess or two. Trojan War, kids?
Oh no, June groans.
Veena in back with me squeals. Trojan War, let’s play Trojan War, she says. Whenever Veena laughs she pats me on the arm. In the car it’s getting dark and she’s shadowy.
What’s Trojan War? I say.
It’s a game, Minnie says. Did you notice our names? We’re the goddesses and you’re Paris.
You have to choose, Veena squeals softly out of the darkness beside me. You have to decide which one of us you like best. And then—Veena giggles again—the one you choose gives you a reward.
I don’t get it.
Maybe he doesn’t know the story, June says.
Of course he does, Minnie says. Don’t you?
I don’t get what I’m supposed to do.
Choose the one you like best. Love, fame, or money—
That’s not it, that’s Careers.
Love, wisdom, money, June says.
Minnie thought up this game last year when this cute guy noticed our names, June says. I forget his name.
They had to monkey around to make me fit, Veena said. My real name’s Veronica.
So what am I supposed to do?
Be Paris. Just pick which one of us you like best.
I like you all equally.
No, pick the reward you want, Veena says. Pick June, she’ll give you money. Minnie gives you wisdom. Pick me.
June will give me money?
Not real money. They laugh.
Symbolic money, Minnie says. They whoop.
Fuck wisdom, Minnie says. Who’s going to pick wisdom in this day and age? Let’s update it to fit Davey. To fit the problems of his life. How about it, Davey?
I don’t know.
Well I see some questions that fit you, Minnie says. Which do you care for? Judy or her father? Love or career?
What about me? June says.
You’re money. Love, career, or money.
He won’t pick me, June says. If he wanted money he wouldn’t be a professor.
Okay, you be career. Prestige and status. Tenure. I’ll be Harry, his work, his mind. Veena’s Judy.
You want me to choose one of those?
Exactly.
What happens when I do?
The one you pick gives you a reward.
Let’s play it right this time, Veena says. No cop-outs, okay?
I don’t understand. Which do I pick, one of you or one of those goals?
Pick the one of us you like best.
I like you equally. I like you all fine.
So pick the one with the reward you like best.
Well what are those rewards?
You’ll find out after you have picked.
But how can I pick if I don’t know the rewards?
Pick what you care most for, Minnie says. Love, work, or prestige. Judy, Harry, or yourself. Veena, me, or June.
I try to go along. The truth is I no longer know what I want. I’m feeling somewhat sour about everything. I stall.
Shit man, Minnie says. If it’s that much of a problem, forget it. I’m sorry I suggested it.
Veena is disappointed. Damn, she says. We never get to play.
No no, I’ll play. They wait, I hold my breath. I pick Judy.
Judy, Veena says. That’s love. That’s me. You pick me.
I knew you would, Minnie says. You’re so conventional.
June laughs.
So what’s my reward? I say.
You’ll find out, Veena says.
Are we ready to look for a motel? Minnie says.
Yes yes a motel, Veena says.
The motel is a Day’s Inn. At the desk, June says, One for the three of us, one for you, is that right? Fine, I say.
The rooms are adjacent on the second floor near the end. They open on the balcony. We go to our respective rooms together. The girls have heavy bags, they struggle up the steps. They go into their room and I into mine. I unpack pajamas and toilet kit and put the latter in the bathroom
. I turn on the TV but I’m not in the mood. I’m in a bad mood I guess, although it feels like a good mood. Except the guilty feeling I expect to feel later on, though I don’t feel it yet. Since nobody has said anything more about it, I wonder if the Trojan War game is over, if my making a choice was all there was to it, like Truth instead of Consequences. I tell myself I’m weary of the joke. The game was a flirtation, I decide, and it riles me like the mock trial on the island, for I’ve had my fill of mockeries where nothing means anything and you only pretend it does.
The phone rings. Are you in bed yet? It’s Veena.
I’m watching TV.
Did you take a shower?
What? I hear giggling in the background.
I just want to know if you took a shower.
Yes I did.
Don’t go to sleep yet.
All right then. A moment later I go to the door to let her in. She’s wearing a gold robe, which she takes off with nothing under it. She looks pretty good.
Your prize, she says.
I suspected this.
I let her get into bed. She smells good and is soft and firm. Just pretend I am Judy, she says.
That’s good of you.
Of course it is, she says. I’m good at the things I do.
She leans over me on the pillow. Would you like me to take off your pajamas?
All right. Hold me, she says. I do so. Though she was nonexistent to me as recently as this morning, when I climb on she’s sweet and strong, sharing nature with the perfumed malls of America. I have a deliberate thought, this is not Judy Field. I think of Judy watching while I wash my hands of her. Veena murmurs and whispers.
How do you like your prize?
Later, in the silence of the settling back, I ask what would have happened if I had picked Minnie or June.
Same thing, she says. This was our way of deciding who gets to sleep with you. Thank you for picking me, she says, like thank you for calling Delta.
I consider the deep choice they had asked me to make. So any choice I make, what I get is sex? What else would you want? she says.
She gets sentimental. After tomorrow, we’ll never see each other again. Don’t go to sleep yet. When you leave, I’ll cry. Write to me.
Disciples Page 20