World's End

by T. C. Boyle

Walter didn’t wait for clarification. All at once he was assailed by the most racking, god-awful stomach pains he’d ever known. He jerked upright, then leaned forward to set his tumbler down on a coffee table older than coffee itself. The pain hit him again. He snubbed his cigarette with a shaking hand. “You all right?” Dipe asked him.

  “I’m”—he stood, wincing—“I think I’m … hungry, that’s all.”

  “Hungry?” echoed LeClerc. “After a meal like that?”

  Lula had served stuffed pork chops, mashed potatoes and canned asparagus, with homemade apple pie, ice cream and coffee for dessert. Walter hadn’t felt much like eating, but he’d done justice to it anyway, putting away a modest portion, if not exactly polishing his plate. But now, as the words escaped his lips, he realized that the sudden pains, these volcanic contractions and dilations that felt as if they would split him open, were hunger pains. And that he was hungry. But not just hungry. Ravenous, starved, mad—killing mad—for the scent and texture and taste of food.

  Dipe laughed. “He’s a growing boy. You remember growing, right, LeClerc?” This was a reference to LeClerc’s ballooning gut. The stranger laughed. Or rather snickered. The gloom lifted momentarily.

  “Go on into the kitchen, Walter,” Dipe was saying. “Stick your head in the refrigerator, go through the cupboards—you’re welcome to anything I’ve got, you know that.”

  Walter was already in the hallway when the stranger called out, “Bring me back some peanuts or something, will you?”

  The first think he saw on opening the refrigerator door was a six-pack of Budweiser. He didn’t want beer, not exactly, but he popped one and drained it anyway. Beside the beer were the remains of the apple pie—nearly half of it, in fact—still in its baking dish. Walter made short work of it. In the meat compartment he found half a pound of pastrami, a rock-hard fragment of Parmesan and six thin pink slices of roast beef in an Offenbacher’s bag. Before he knew what he was doing, he had the whole mess in his mouth and was washing it down with another beer. He was reaching for the glossy bright can of whipped cream, thinking to squirt some of it down his throat, when Mardi walked in on him.

  “Oh, uh, hi,” he said, guiltily closing the refrigerator door. He held a beer in one hand, and, somehow, a jar of marinated artichoke hearts had appeared in the other.

  “What’s happening?” Mardi said, laconic, her eyes wide and amused, yet a bit blunted too. She was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking, no brassiere, cowgirl boots. Her raccoon coat and woolen scarf were thrown over one arm. She reeked of pot. “Pigging out, huh?”

  Walter set the beer down to unscrew the lid of the jar. He fished out a couple of artichoke hearts with his fingers and wedged them in his mouth, dabbing with the back of his hand at the oil dribbling down his chin. “I’m hungry,” he said simply.

  “Why don’t you just move in?” she said in a breathy whisper. “Take my room.” She opened the refrigerator and took a beer herself.

  From across the house came the rumble of lamentation and the muffled but unmistakable tones of LeClerc Outhouse affirming an unheard proposition: “Damn straight!”

  Walter couldn’t help himself. He finished the artichoke hearts—there were only about twelve of them—and, still chewing, tilted back the jar and drank off the thick, herb-flavored olive oil in which they’d been preserved.

  Mardi pulled the short-necked bottle from her lips and gave him a look of mock horror. “Disgusting,” she said.

  Walter shrugged, and went for the crullers in the bread box.

  She watched him eat a moment, then asked him how Alaska was.

  “You know,” he said between mouthfuls, “cold.”

  There was a silence. The voices from the parlor became more animated. Joanna, hugely pregnant Joanna, passed by in the hallway in a silk dressing gown. Her skin was white, her hair upswept in a conventional coif. She wasn’t even wearing moccasins.

  “What’s going on in there,” Mardi asked, indicating the parlor with a jerk of her head, “—they plotting something or what?”

  Walter shrugged. He was considering the half loaf of thin-sliced whole wheat bread he’d found beside the crullers. Peanut butter? he was thinking. Or pimento cream cheese?

  Suddenly Mardi had hold of his arm and she was leaning into him, brushing his cheek with her own. “Want to go upstairs for a quickie?” she breathed, and for a minute, just a minute, he stopped chewing. But then she pushed away from him with a laugh—“Had you, didn’t I? Huh? Admit it.”

  He looked from the loaf in his hand to her breasts, her lovely, familiar breasts, the upturned nipples so well delineated she might just as well have forgone the body stocking. The hunger—the hunger of the gut, anyway—began to subside.

  Mardi was grinning, poised to dodge away from him like a kid with a swiped cap or notebook. “Only kidding,” she said. “Hey, I’m on my way out the door.”

  Walter managed to summon a “where to?” look, though at the moment he couldn’t have cared less.

  “Garrison,” she said, “where else?” And then she was gone.

  Walter stood there a long moment, listening to the voices drifting in from the parlor, listening to Dipe Van Wart, his employer, his mentor, his best and only friend. Dipe Van Wart, who’d molded his father into a piece of shit. He thought about that a moment longer, and thought about Hesh and Lola, Tom Crane, Jessica, the late lamented Peletiah, Sasha Freeman, Morton Blum, Rose Pollack. They were pieces of shit too. All of them. He was alone. He was hard, soulless and free. He was Meursault shooting the Arab. He could do anything, anything he wanted.

  He put the bread back in the bread box and poured the rest of his beer down the drain. His coat was in the parlor, but he wouldn’t need it. He didn’t feel like going back in there now, and besides, it wasn’t cold—not when you’ve just come back from Barrow, anyway. He leaned against the counter and focused on the clock over the stove, forcing himself to wait until the second hand had circled it twice. It’s in the blood, Walter, he heard his father say. And then he crossed the kitchen and slipped out the back door.

  The night assaulted him with silence. He stumped through the snow, fighting for balance, and caught himself on the fender of the car. When he fired up the engine and flicked on the lights, he could see the dark rectangle where Mardi’s car had been drawn up to the curb, and then the long trailing runners of her tire tracks sloping gracefully down the drive. And when he got to the bottom of the drive he saw that the tracks veered left, toward Garrison.

  He could have turned right and gone home to bed.

  But he didn’t.

  Fifteen minutes later he was pulling into the commuter lot on the dim far fringes of the Garrison station. The lot was unpaved and untended, a dusty Sonoran expanse of sharp-edged rock and brittle weed. Tonight it was white, smooth, perfect. Cars lined the single street in front of the station and there were another fifty or so in the lot, but they were close in, beneath the station lights. Walter chose to go beyond them, to blaze his own path. He wanted to be inconspicuous.

  The MG had good traction, but he could feel the wheels slipping out from under him. Hidden obstacles were giving him a roller coaster ride, the visibility was about the same whether he had his eyes open or not and the rear end seemed to have a will of its own: before he knew it he was sunk in a crater deep enough to swallow a school bus. Furious, he gunned the accelerator. The rear wheels whined, the chassis shuddered beneath him. He slammed it into reverse, gunned it, rammed it back into first, gunned it again. Nothing. He kept at it for maybe ten minutes, gaining an inch on one run to lose it on the next.

  Shit. He pounded the wheel in frustration. He didn’t even know why he’d come—it wasn’t to see Tom and Jessica, that was for shit sure, or Mardi either. In fact, he didn’t want to see anyone, or be seen either. And now he was stuck. Like an idiot. Enraged, he popped the clutch and gunned it again, and then he slammed his fist into the dash so hard he went through the odometer lens and slashed his knuckles. He was s
ucking at the wound and cursing, so frustrated he could cry, when someone rapped at the windshield.

  A muffled figure stood there in the snow. Walter rolled down the window and saw a second muffled figure lurking behind the first. “Need help?” A guy with shaggy wet hair and a beard stuck his head in the window. For a moment Walter panicked, thinking it was Tom Crane, but then he recovered himself. “Yeah. Son of a bitch. There’s a pit or something here, feels like.”

  “We’ll push,” the guy said. “Hit it when I yell.”

  Walter left the window down. Snow drifted in to melt against the side of his face. It was warm, really it was. He was wondering how it could possibly be snowing when it was so balmy, when he heard a yell from behind and hit the accelerator. The car went up the hump, hesitated, and then a new impetus from the rear put it over the top and he was sailing out across the lot. He didn’t stop till he’d reached the far side, all the way across, under the lowering cover of the trees. When he climbed out, his benefactors were gone.

  He still didn’t know why he’d come, or what he was going to do, but he thought for starters he’d maybe just cross the lot and poke his head in at the tent. He wasn’t sure Jessica would be there, but he knew she and Tom were really into this sloop thing—that much she’d told him herself—and he guessed she would be. Tom too, of course. Maybe he’d just have a beer, hang out in the back. He didn’t really want to talk to her—not after what had happened in the cabin. But a beer. Maybe he’d just have a beer.

  Easier said than done.

  The going was tough—as tough as it had been in Barrow, though not as icy—and he went down twice on his knees before he reached the railway platform. His jacket—wool blend, black and gray herringbone, one hundred and twenty-five bucks—was wet through already, ruined no doubt, and the tie had tightened like a noose around his neck. He began to regret not going back for his coat. For a long moment he stood hunched on the platform, sucking at the gash between his knuckles. Then he drifted off toward the music.

  He was shivering by the time he ducked inside, and despite himself, he made his way toward the nearest of the heaters. He was surprised at how many people had turned out—a couple of hundred, at least. There looked to be half that many out on the dance floor alone—four big double rows of square dancers, going at it like refugees from the harvest hoedown in Hog’s Back, Tennessee. The beer was good—Schaeffer, on tap—but after his eating attack Walter felt filled up right to the back of his throat and he could only sip at it. He didn’t recognize a single face in the crowd.

  He was still wondering what he was doing there and beginning to feel less than inconspicuous in his short hair, sports coat and tie, when he caught a glimpse of Jessica. She was out on the dance floor, in the middle of the throng, swinging from somebody’s arm, he couldn’t see whose. Wedging his way between a pair of middle-aged characters with white ponytails and mustard-colored sweatshirts that featured reproductions of the Arcadia listing beneath the swell of their middle-aged bellies, he got a better look. She was wearing an old-fashioned calico dress with ruffles and peaked shoulders, her hair was in braids and there was a smile of pure pleasure on her lips. He didn’t recognize the guy she was dancing with, but it wasn’t Tom Crane. He fell back away from the heater and into the shadows, suddenly agitated. He felt his face twist up and he flung his beer violently to the ground. The next minute he was outside again.

  The snow seemed heavier now and a wind had come up to make it dance and drift. It seemed colder too. Walter crossed in front of the tent and made his way into a deep fold of shadow behind the duplex that fronted the street. There he propped himself up against the wall, lit a cigarette with hands that had already begun to tremble and watched. He watched the party wind down and begin to break up. He watched people slap backs, gesture at the sky, heard them call out to one another in hearty, beery voices, watched them troop off, heads bowed, toward the cars parked along the street and in the commuter lot beyond it. He watched an elderly couple in matching London Fog raincoats hump up the hill past him and he watched Tom Crane, gangling like a great pinched spider, his denim jacket so sodden it practically pulled him down, stagger through the mob and into the tent. He watched Mardi too—leaving with a guy in serape, boots and sombrero who looked as if he were on his way to a costume party. He watched all this, and still he didn’t know why he’d come. Then Will Connell was singing “We Shall Overcome,” cars were cranking over like the start of the Grand Prix, and Tom and Jessica, arms entwined, sauntered out of the tent.

  Like lovers.

  Like lovers in a dream.

  Walter watched as they turned away from the crowd and made their way toward the dock—and the sloop. And then he understood: they had the romance of the storm, the romance of the do-gooders and marshwort preservers, of the longhairs and other-cheek turners, the romance of peace and brotherhood and equality, and they were taking their weary righteous souls to bed in the romance of the sloop. All at once he knew why he’d come. All at once he knew.

  It took them an hour to settle down. At least. Equipment loaders, garbage haulers, stragglers and kibitzers, all of them milling around the front of the tent as if they’d just stepped out of an Off-Broadway theater. Walter, chilled through now, fumbled his way back to the MG—the snow so furious he could barely find it—to huddle over the heater and give them time. He smoked. Listened to the radio. Felt the jacket pinch around his shoulders and pull back from his wrists as the moisture began to steam out of it. An hour. The windshield was gone, his footprints erased. He concentrated on the eerie spatulate light of the station and crossed the lot for the third time that night.

  The ship was dark, the marina deserted. He stood there on the snow-covered dock, breathing hard, the musty, damp, polluted breath of the river in his face, the sloop rising above him like an ancient presence, like some privateer dredged up from the bottom, like some ghost ship. Creaking, whispering, moaning with a hundred tongues, she rode out away from the dock on the pull of the flood tide, and the dock moaned with her. Three lines held her. Three lines, that was all. One aft, one amidships, one at the stern. Three lines, looped over the pilings. Walter was no stranger to boats, to cleats and half-hitches and the dark tug of the river. He knew what he was doing. He rubbed his hands together to work the stiffness out of them, and then he reached for the stern line.

  “I wouldn’t do it, Walter,” sang a voice behind him.

  He didn’t even have to turn around. “Go home, gram,” he whispered. “Leave me alone.”

  “It’s in the bones,” his father said, and there he was, big-headed and crude, the snow screening his face like a muffler. He was bent over the piling amidships, tugging at the line.

  “Leave it!” Walter shouted, startled by the sound of his own voice, and he stalked up the dock and right through the old man as if he weren’t there. “Leave it,” he muttered, clomping around the piling like a puppet on a string, “this is for me to do, this is for me.” He lifted his hand to his mouth, sucked at the dark blood frozen to his knuckles. And then, in a rage, he jerked the line from the piling and dropped it in the river.

  He straightened up. Laughter. He heard laughter. Were they laughing at him, was that it? His mouth hardened. He squinted into the driving snow. Up ahead, in the shadows, he saw movement, a scurry of pathetic little legs and deformed feet, dwarfish hands fussing over the aft line. There was a splash, muted by the snow and the distance, and then the sloop swung free like the needle of a compass until it fixed on the open river, held now only by the single rigid line at its stern.

  It took him a moment. A long moment. He moved back down the dock and stood there over that last frail line, and the line became a ribbon, the bow on a little pony Parilla motorbike, just tug it—tug it once—and it falls free. He jerked his head around. Nothing. No father, no grandmother, no ghosts. Only snow. What had he wanted—to go aboard, climb into the bunk with them, save the marshwort and become a good guy, an idealist, one of the true and unwavering? Is that wh
at it was? The thought was so bitter he laughed aloud. Then he pulled the ribbon.

  The moment held—perfect balance, utter silence, the slow grace of gathering movement—and then off she went, all one hundred six feet and thirteen tons of her, pulling away from him like a figure in a dream. She followed her nose and the flood tide and she drifted out across the invisible river, dead on for Gees Point and the black haunted immemorial depths of World’s End. He watched till the snow closed over her, and then he turned away.

  He was trembling—with cold, with fear, with excitement and relief—and he thought of the car. Almost wistfully, he looked once more out into the night, out over his shoulder and into the slashing strokes of the snow and the void beyond, and then he turned to go. But the dock was slick and his feet betrayed him. Before he could take a step, the hard white surface of the dock was rushing up to meet him and he hit it with a boom that seemed to thunder through the night. And then the unexpected happened, the unaccountable, the little thing that pumped him full of dread: a light went on. A light. Out there at the end of the dock, thirty feet from him, a sudden violation of the night, the river, the storm. He lay there, his heart hammering, and heard movement from below: heavy, muffled sounds.

  And then he saw it—the low shadow of a boat drawn up on the other side of the dock, a second light gone on now, much closer. He pushed himself up, choked with panic, and his feet slid out from under him again. “Hey,” a voice called out, and it was right beside him. There was a man on the boat, a man with a flashlight, and as the boat materialized from the shadows, Walter went numb. He knew it. He knew that boat. He did. Peterskill Marina. Halloween. The floating outhouse with the bum aboard, the Indian—what had Mardi called him?

  Jeremy. She’d called him Jeremy.

  Suddenly he was on his feet and running—scrambling, flailing, staggering, pitching headlong into the night—the voice raking him from behind. “Hey,” it called, and it was the bay of a hound. “Hey, what’s going on?”