Barking Man

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Assez,” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “Un pas de plus et j’achève ton chien. Fin de l’histoire pour ton petit cachou.”

  The little pickpocket stepped back so the light shone on his face again. He gazed woundedly at Ton-Ton Detroit, his eyes round and swimming with water, his plump mouth set in a little pout. The dog was still moving somewhere in the dark.

  “Et pourquoi tu me fais une tête comme ça?” Ton-Ton Detroit said. “Tu t’en ai tiré pas mal, quand même. T’as pas besoin de moi, je dirais.”

  The little pickpocket continued to stare at him wordlessly, a world of hurt swimming around in his eyes. Ton-Ton Detroit had never heard him speak a syllable to anyone other than the dog. It occurred to him for the first time now that perhaps it really was the dog whose thoughts controlled the boy. The world was full of a number of things, many of them possible. After a little while longer than Ton-Ton Detroit would have preferred, the dog reappeared in the ring of light and worked its gradual way to the other side of it. Again the leash grew taut, and the little pickpocket swiveled and went after the dog, drifting farther away into the darkness beyond. Ton-Ton Detroit listened, straining his ears, until the last whisper of the child’s footsteps was gone. Still, it was a very long time before he could rid himself of the sensation that he was being watched.

  Martin could not have told just when it began to cost him an effort to preserve his calm, but certainly it was a good while after it had grown completely dark. All the visible changes in the landscape had stopped, except for the blinking of lights in Menton. At the far edge of the spangle of lights, the Saint-Michel bell tower was lit from below by a big orange flood. The tower was so distant and still it seemed to make a period to time, and Martin could almost forget time was passing at all, except when very occasionally a train shot out of the tunnel below him and rushed with a long sigh toward the town.

  After three slow drinks he screwed the cap back on the bottle of pastis. He was not at all hungry, and Nadine was asleep; the antihistamines had knocked her cold like they usually did. It was getting a little too cool on the balcony, but he still didn’t much feel like going inside. When finally he heard the key turn in the lock, he decided to stay where he was and not make a big scene of it. Only when he heard the second voice did he rise from the deck chair and go back indoors.

  “Well, hi, Dad,” Mindy said. She seemed a little ill at ease, the way she was jittering from one foot to the other. “This is my good friend, Jones Partouneaux.”

  Martin couldn’t quite focus on the guy for a second; he seemed to swim strangely against that wild wallpaper. Maybe it was just the change of light. When the dazzle had passed he reached out for the handshake and took a good look at Jones Partouneaux from his head to his feet.

  “Very pleased to meet you, Jones,” he said, and then turned to Mindy with equal formality. “You’ll have to excuse us a little while, sweetheart. Jones and I have a couple of things to discuss.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Mindy said.

  “Girl, is that any way to talk to your father?” Clay said. “Can’t you see the man and I got to have our get-acquainted time?”

  Mindy stared at Clay with raw amazement. “Am I sure I heard you right?” she said. “My ears have been a little stopped up since I got off the plane.”

  “I couldn’t have put it any better myself,” Martin said. Mindy swung her hair back over her shoulder with a cross movement like that of a horse switching flies.

  “I mean, this is getting to be the weirdest night,” she said. “Okay, you guys, I’m taking a bath.”

  Martin glanced at Clay, who was smiling vaguely down at the floor. “There’s chairs out on the balcony,” he said. “You can go on out, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  He turned and went into the kitchen to get two fresh glasses, then pushed open the door to the bedroom and entered. Nadine was sleeping on her side, her mouth slightly parted, dampening the pillow. Quietly Martin unzipped his carry-on and got out the bottle of Mirabelle, then left the room by the glass door to the balcony. Clay had sat down to face the opposite direction and he gave a satisfying start when Martin came up behind him.

  “Gotcha,” Martin said. “Feel like a drink?”

  “If you’re planning to have one,” Clay said, his tone rather demure.

  Martin poured a couple of fingers into each of the glasses and pulled up a deck chair next to Clay. The clear liquor bored into him like a blue flame. Behind him he could hear pipes straining in the bathroom.

  Clay raised his glass, took a big drink and coughed.

  “Better go careful,” Martin advised.

  “Right,” Clay said. “I see what you mean.”

  “You like it?” Martin said.

  “Hot stuff,” Clay said. “What is it exactly?”

  “Eau de vie,” Martin said. “You know, like a brandy. I save it for special occasions like this.”

  “I mostly drink B and B myself,” Clay said. “That’s if I’m celebrating something, I mean. Hey, you people got a really nice view from up here.”

  “I’ve found it very relaxing so far,” Martin said.

  “I guess maybe you get tense in your regular job.”

  “Sometimes,” Martin said. “That varies a lot.”

  “Sure,” Clay said. “What is it you do?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” Martin said.

  “Sounds like you’re the kind of guy I most like to meet.”

  “You can’t afford me,” Martin said. “Not anymore.”

  “If you say so,” Clay said. “I won’t argue. But, you want to bet if I can guess what you’re thinking?”

  “How much?” Martin said.

  “Oh, I guess just for fun when we start,” Clay said. “You’re thinking all you had to worry about was maybe some of those blond boys on the Vespas or something like that. Then what does she do but show up with a spade.”

  “Well, not exactly,” Martin said. “We got relatives in L.A. a lot darker than you. But when I take a long look at the shape of that suit, I think romance is not likely to be the top thing on your mind.”

  “Well, yeah,” Clay said. “I won’t tell you you’re wrong.”

  “Also, that name sounds really familiar,” Martin said. “Like maybe I saw it on a map of the town.”

  “That part could always just be a coincidence,” Clay said.

  “Ah, well,” Martin said. “It all just goes to prove what they tell you.”

  “What’s that?” Clay said.

  “Any time you go on a vacation, you can count on it costing you more than you think.”

  Clay slouched down deeper into his chair.

  “I been noticing that a lot lately myself,” he said. “So, what would you say to five thousand American?”

  Martin started laughing in hard little barks.

  “I didn’t know she meant all that much to you, son,” he said. “We can have the wedding whenever you say.”

  Mindy woke up in a cheerful mood, in the wake of good dreams she thought might come true. She wriggled around in the sheets for a while before she sat up. The bed she had slept in folded out toward the balcony and she could look over the foot of it through the glass sliding door. The room and balcony were still in the shade, but she saw sunshine warming the side of the mountains. She got up yawning and put on her blue polka-dot robe. The door to the balcony was open and she could hear the clinking of silverware outside. When she went out she found Nadine and Martin both there at the table. Martin was nursing a cup of coffee and Nadine was slicing into a little green melon. She had on a white blouse buttoned down to her wrists and there was a big blob of zinc oxide on her nose.

  “Nice to see you around again, Mom,” Mindy said. There was a place laid for her too, and she sat down in the chair. “So, you feeling a little better today?”

  “A lot better,” Nadine said. “Practically normal, as a matter of fact.” She slid a melon half onto a plate and put it down at Mindy’s place. Martin unfolded
the Herald Tribune.

  “What is this, some kinda midget cantaloupe?” Mindy said, digging at the melon’s flesh with her spoon.

  “You’re the linguist,” Martin said. “You could always scamper over to the fruit stand and ask. I just grunt and point, myself.”

  “Not bad, though, whatever it is,” Mindy said, squinting at her warped reflection on the back of a spoon. “So you got us all this bread and jam and stuff too? Not bad, Dad, you musta got up early.”

  “Well, I had to go out, make a couple of phone calls,” Martin said. “Besides which, a smile from the princess is a ray of sunshine in my heart.”

  “Get outa here,” Mindy said. “So what were you and Jones talking about all that time? I tapped out waiting for you guys to get through.”

  “I noticed that,” Martin said, tenting himself inside the newspaper. “Probably it’s your jet lag catching up with you. Just blink your eyes and you’re asleep and you have all these crazy dreams.”

  “Jones?” Nadine said. “Do I know any Jones?”

  “He’s just this new fellow Mindy dreamed up,” Martin said. “Sort of a traveling man, I would say.”

  “Hey, it’s great you guys had so much to talk about,” Mindy said, and reached to pour herself some coffee. “I didn’t think he was gonna be your type of guy.”

  “Well, I don’t have to say he’s exactly my type,” Martin said. “But at some fundamental level I think we understand each other. He asked me to tell you goodbye, by the way.”

  “Goodbye?” Mindy put the coffee pot down with a clash. “Goodbye what, is he going somewhere?”

  Though it was the first night in a couple he’d had a real bed and four walls to sleep in, Clay didn’t have the most restful sleep; bad news kept weaseling into his dreams. So many things had been going wrong recently, he didn’t quite trust his luck anymore, didn’t fully believe the guy would make the call, though he’d cut such a tough deal he had no reason not to stick to it, if you looked at it that way. But once he woke up completely the next morning he felt a little better, and when he got to the travel agent everything was like it should be. On the way to the train station he stopped at a bar for a beer and some cigarettes. On impulse he also bought himself one fat cigar. He drank the first short glass of beer at the counter and carried the second out to a table. Two were enough to make a nice breakfast. Outside it was bright and breezy, and cooler than it had been for a couple of days. The lapels of his jacket ruffled back and subsided with the rising and falling of the wind. Clay sucked the last dribble of foam off the rim of his glass and walked the rest of the way up the street to the station. There was a bus that went straight to the airport from here, but he wasn’t in all that much of a rush. Maybe there’d be a bar car on the train, and he could take a cab once he was in Nice. Even after the hotel and the train ticket, he had a little better than a thousand francs left. Although he was a quarter hour early, the train was already on the track, and he crossed through the underpass and went up to get on it. There were plenty of empty compartments. He picked out a good one and sat down to wait.

  Of course the guy had to be a lawyer … but he’d done all right, considering that. If he’d had the nerve to make his call somewhere else, Clay could have been pulling some French jail right now, and he liked it better sitting on the train, even without all the money he had hoped for. A thousand francs ahead was not all that bad; he knew it wouldn’t make enough dollars to go far in New York, but then he’d be back where his hustles would work. A fat lady shaped like a mushroom lurched into the compartment, boosting two lopsided suitcases ahead of her with her knees. Clay stood up, smiling and nodding, and helped her load them in the overhead rack. She was saying stuff the whole time he did it, to thank him, or tell him he was doing it wrong. But soon he’d be back to where people spoke English. The train started moving just as he got the bags jammed in, and he screwed around on one leg and fell back in his seat.

  Through the warped glass of the window, the town seemed to melt. Clay wasn’t sorry to see it slide back. Monte Carlo was the first stop on this line, man, and at least he was coming back through in a little more style than he’d left last time. Maybe he should get off and try to run up his thousand. His hand slipped absently to his inside pocket to squeeze the plump folder of the airplane ticket. There’d be some place in Monaco where the thing could be sold. The cigar cellophane crackled, tucked next to the ticket. Never mind, fool, it’s time to get out of here. He shucked the cigar out of its wrapper, bit the end off and lit up. When he’d barely let out the first roller of smoke, the fat lady began coughing in a significant way, looking at him sidelong with pointy eyes. Clay smiled and stood up and slid the compartment door open; he’d see if there was a bar car, there was plenty of time. Turning back in the doorway, he gave her a bow.

  “You can go to hell if you want to, lady,” he said. You could say whatever you wanted so long as you smiled. “I’m through with you people. I’m going home.”

  The jets of the shower were needle sharp and the head itself was as big as a sunflower. Inside the cubicle, the light was pearly gray. Ton-Ton Detroit stood with his face a foot from the shower head and let the rush of water plane down his features, turned hard and hot as it would go. When he couldn’t stand it anymore he turned his back to the jet and scrubbed all over his body with a pyramid-shaped hunk of brown soap, hard and rough as a pumice stone, till he felt he’d rubbed off a layer of skin. The water burst off his back in four directions, slid down all the walls and went swirling into the dented brass ring of the drain between his two feet. He soaped his hair and rinsed till the water began to run clear.

  Finished, he pulled the dashiki from the hook where he’d hung it and held it under the shower until it was soaked. Once it was drenched he rubbed the soap all over it, then began to scour the fabric with two stones from the beach. The cloth was still new enough to run a little dye, and the colors came brighter the wetter they got. He gave the robe a forceful twist to wring most of the water out and stuffed it into a plastic grocery bag he’d brought along for the purpose.

  Damply dressed in his jeans and blue undershirt, Ton-Ton Detroit went down the steps to the hall where the attendant sat reading the paper and twisting the tuft of hair that grew from the dark mole on the side of her chin. Around her he could see a patch of the harbor, shining so keenly it made him squint. He put an extra fifty centimes in her saucer and smiled widely at her as he went out, though she didn’t bother to look up.

  Gooseflesh had begun to speckle from one arm to the other across his shoulders by the time he got to the outer sea wall. The tide was in and long iodine-blue swells ran in from the sea, striking the rocks with wild bursts of spray. Ton-Ton Detroit shook out the dashiki and spread it on the inside corner of one of the posts, where the spray could not reach it, stroking it flat to dry without wrinkles. It would take a half hour to dry in this sun.

  He stood far out on the rocks and let the spray spatter him, tasting salt at the edge of his mouth with his tongue. The feel of his skin was still vibrant and clean. He went to the post and put together his flute and sat down, holding it on his lap with both hands curled around it. The haze of the last few days had lifted and the horizon was a sharp razor line which the waves ran back to in long roll after roll. He pictured his peace as a round white lifeboat, and it had been sucked out nearly that far, but now he could feel the tide bringing it back surely within his reach. Ton-Ton Detroit put on his fisherman’s sunglasses. Under the fourth wave a dozen faintly silver fish hung flickering, all of them facing his way, letting the water lift them and lower them, lift them and lower them, as he brought the flute to his lips in a smooth round motion and began to play “Green Dolphin Street.”

  WITNESS

  THE DAY HE HEARD that Paxton Morgan was released, Wilson had been planning to revise a will. It was a slack period for him and he didn’t expect to be in court until late in the following week, but he’d come in early just the same. The door to his inner office was open o
n the lateral hallway, and he could hear the whisk of a letter opener as Mrs. Veech, behind the front desk, sliced into the morning mail. Mostly bills or offers of subscriptions, he’d glanced through it quickly on his way in.

  There was a jingle as the front door opened and Wilson raised his head to listen, but it was a man he didn’t want to see, and Mrs. Veech denied his presence. A grumble, sound of pacing, scrape of a match and a faint distant odor of tobacco. Mrs. Veech coughed. The voice grudgingly inquired if the smoke bothered her. Mrs. Veech said nothing but coughed again, more significantly. Her allergy to cigarettes was highly selective—Wilson, for instance, smoked himself. When the front door released a jangle of departure, he picked up his pencil and went back to the will. Mrs. Veech, he could hear, was dealing with the remains of the mail.

  “Mr. Wilson, did you know they were letting Pax Morgan go?

  He heard her voice without immediately understanding it, registering only the anxiously rising note at the end. The task in his hand was complicated, though almost entirely frivolous: the testament of a women some forty years old who would probably live at least forty more, revising her bequests more or less semiannually. Still, it was an amusement she could afford if it pleased her, harmless enough, and he had use for the fee.

  He drafted another line or two on the long yellow pad and broke the point of his pencil. Then the sense of Mrs. Veech’s question reached him and he stood up, taking a cigarette from his shirt pocket as he stepped into the hall. Mrs. Veech sat bolt upright in her desk chair, clamping some sort of form in both her hands. Wilson took it from her and walked to the front window, setting the unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he moved. It was a slick gray photocopy of a release form from Central State, with the name of Paxton Morgan typed along with other information and the illegibly scrawled signature of some doctor or official in the lower right-hand corner. He noted that the box for the date was not filled in.