High Hunt

by Eddings, David

  "Yeah," I said, "pretty much."

  They thought about that.

  "Is there any kind of — well, you know — among the resisters, I mean?" another one asked.

  "I don't think I should — well — the guys still inside — you know."

  They kicked that around for a while.

  "Do the other inmates — ?"

  "Some do. Some don't."

  That shook them.

  "Do you think a guy really ought to — ? Instead of — well, you know."

  "That's something everybody's got to decide for himself," I said. I could say that with a straight face, because I really believed it. "When the time comes, you're the one with your head in the meat grinder. After all the speeches and slogans — from all possible sides — you're still the one who has to decide which button you're going to push because it's your head that's going to get turned into hamburger."

  That really got to them.

  "I'd better split now," I said, lurching to my feet. I walked heavily toward the door, feeling just a little like James Bond — or maybe Lenin — or just possibly like Baron Munchausen. I turned at the doorway and gave them the peace sign — they'd earned it. Look at all the beer they'd bought me.

  "Keep the faith," I said in a choked-up voice. Then I went on out.

  The patter of little bare feet behind me told me that I hadn't really escaped after all.

  "You'd better go on back to your friends, Clydine," I said, not bothering to look around.

  Glom! She had me by the arm again. She pulled me to a halt beside my car.

  "Danny," she said, looking up at me. "I think you're just the most — well —” She climbed up my arm hand over hand and pulled my face down to hers.

  Despite some bad experiences, I'm not a woman-hater. On the whole, I think the idea of two sexes is way out front of any possible alternatives. I responded to Clydine's kiss with a certain enthusiasm.

  After a while she pulled her face clear and looked at me, her big eyes two pools of compassion behind those gogglelike granny glasses.

  "How long has it been, Danny?" she whispered.

  As a matter of fact it had been a little better than a month.

  “Too long," I said brokenly, "too long."

  She let go of me, opened the door of my car, and got in.

  "Will there be any problem at the place where you live?" she asked matter-of-factly.

  "No," I told her, starting the car.

  We drove across town to the trailer park in silence. Clydine nestled against my shoulder. In spite of the shabby clothes which she wore as a sort of uniform, she smelled clean. That's a pretty common misconception about girls like Clydine. I've never met one yet who wasn't pretty clean most of the time.

  As a matter of fact, the first thing she did when we got to my trailer was to go into the bathroom and wash her bare feet.

  "I wouldn't want to get your sheets all filthy," she said. She stopped suddenly, her hand flying to her mouth. Silently she mouthed the words "Is this place bugged?" at me. Too many movies.

  Motioning her to silence, I picked up my FM transistor from the coffee table and stuffed the earplug into the side of my head. I turned it on, picking up a fairly good Beethoven piano sonata — which she, of course, couldn't hear. I made a pretense of checking out the trailer.

  "It's clean," I told her, switching it off.

  "How does that —”

  "It's a little modification," I said. "An old con in the joint showed me how. You get anywhere near a microphone with it and you pick up a feedback — you know, a high-pitched whistle." I jerked the plug and switched the piano sonata back on. "And that'll blank out any directional mike from outside." I moved carefully to all the windows, looking out and then pulling the drapes. Then I locked the door. I go to movies, too.

  "We're all secure now," I said.

  "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

  I shook my head.

  "I understand, Danny. Maybe after."

  I wished to hell she wouldn't be so cold-blooded about it.

  "You want a drink?" I asked. I always get nervous. I always have.

  "Well, maybe a little one."

  I mixed us a couple, hitting hers a little hard with bourbon. I didn't want her to get away.

  We sat on the couch drinking silently. I just sipped at mine. I didn't want to booze myself out of action.

  She took off the granny glasses and laid them on the table. Without the damned things, she had a cute little face. She was one of those short, perky little girls who used to get elected cheerleaders before all this other stuff came along. Then, without so much as turning a hair, she shucked off the sweatshirt. She wasn't wearing a bra.

  My faint worry about the booze turned out to be pretty irrelevant.

  She stood up, her frontage coming to attention like two pink little soldiers. "Let's go to bed now, shall we?" she said and walked on back down the narrow hallway to the bedroom.

  I put down my drink and turned out the lamp in the living room.

  "Don't forget to bring in the transistor," she reminded me.

  I picked it up and went on back.

  She had finished undressing, and she was lying on the bed. My hands began to shake. She had a crazy build on her — real wall-to-wall girl. I started to take off my shirt.

  "Do you have to leave it on that station?" she asked, pointing at the transistor. "I mean is that the only frequency that —”

  "That's the one," I said. "I'd have to take it all apart to —”

  "It's OK," she said. "It's just that I've never done it with that kind of music on before. Groups most of the time or folk rock — never Beethoven."

  At least she recognized it.

  I was having a helluva time with my shirt.

  "Here," she said, sitting up, "let me." She pushed my hands out of the way and finished unbuttoning my shirt. "Do you like having the light on?"

  "It's a little bright, isn't it?" I asked, squinting at it.

  "Some men do, that's all — that's why I asked."

  "Oh."

  "Do you like to be on top, or do you want me to —”

  I reached down and gently lifted her chin. "Clydine, love, it's not just exactly as if we were about to run a quarterback sneak off-tackle. We don't have to get it all planned out in the huddle, do we? Let's just improvise, make it up as we go along."

  She smiled up at me, almost shyly. "I just want it to be good for you, is all," she said softly.

  "Quit worrying about it," I told her. I sat down on the bed and reached for her. "One thing though," I said, cupping one of the little pink soldiers.

  "What's that?" she asked, nuzzling my neck.

  "How in the hell did you ever get a name like Clydine?"

  She told me, but I promised never to tell anybody else.

  8

  “What’s this doing here?" Clydine was standing over me the next morning, stark naked, with my Army blouse clutched in her little fist. She shook it at me. "What's this doing here?" she demanded again.

  "You're wrinkling it," I said. "Don't wrinkle it."

  "You're a GI, aren't you?" she said, her voice shaking with fury. "A no-good, lousy, son-of-a-bitching, mother-fucking GI!"

  "Clydine!" I was actually shocked. I'd never heard a girl use that kind of language before.

  "You bastard!"

  "Calm down," I told her, sitting up in bed.

  "Motherfucker!"

  "Clydine, please don't use that kind of language. It sounds very ugly coming from a girl your age."

  "Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker!" she yelled, stamping her foot. Then she threw the blouse on the floor and collapsed on the bed, sobbing bitterly.

  I got up, hung the blouse back up in the closet, and padded barefoot on out to the kitchen. I got myself a beer. I had a bit of a headache. Then I went on back to the bedroom. She was still crying.

  "Are you about through?" I asked her.

  "Son-of-a-bitching motherfucker!" sh
e said, her voice muffled.

  "I'm getting a little tired of that," I told her.

  "Bite my ass!"

  I reached over and got a good grip on her arm so she couldn't get a swing at me, then I leaned down and bit her on the fanny, hard.

  "Dan! Stop that! Ouch, goddammit! Stop that!"

  I let go. I'd left a pretty good set of teethmarks on her can. "Any more suggestions?" I asked her.

  "Of all the —” She nibbed at her bottom tenderly. "Goddammit, that hurt!"

  "It was your idea," I said, taking a pull at the beer bottle.

  "Can I have some?" she asked me after a minute or so. She sounded like a little girl.

  "If you promise not to throw it at me."

  "I'll be good."

  I gave her the bottle, and she took a drink. "Oh, Danny, how could you? All that beautiful story about letting them put you in prison for a principle. It was all a lie, wasn't it?"

  "Are you ready to listen now?"

  "I believed in you, Danny."

  "You want to hear this?"

  "I really believed in you."

  I got up and walked on out to the living room.

  After a minute she came padding out, still rubbing at her bare fanny. Her little soldiers were still at attention. She was just as cute as hell.

  "All right. Let's hear it," she said.

  "First off," I said, plunking myself on the couch. "I'm not a GI — not anymore anyway."

  "You've deserted!" she squealed, sitting down beside me.

  "No, dear. I was discharged — honorably."

  "You mean you didn't even —”

  "Hush," I said, "I was drafted. I thought it all over, and I went ahead and went in. I spent eighteen months in Germany."

  "Germany!"

  I kissed her — hard. Our teeth clacked together. "Now I'm going to do that every time you interrupt me," I told her.

  "But —”

  I did it again. It was kind of fun.

  "I did not run off to Canada. I did not go to Leavenworth. I did not go to Nam. I didn't kill anybody. I didn't help anybody kill anybody. I drank a lot of German beer. I looked at a lot of castles and museums. Then I came home."

  "But how —”

  I kissed her again.

  "Not so hard —” she said, her fingertips touching her mouth tenderly.

  "All right. Now, on my first night back from the land of Wiener schnitzels, you and Joan braced me down on Pacific Avenue with a fistful of pamphlets — we chatted a minute or two. That's how I came to know your names."

  She looked at me, her eyes widening suddenly.

  "At the theater last night," I went on, "there were some people I didn't want to talk to, so when I saw you and Joan, I just moved in on you with the first silly-ass story that came into my head. After that, things just got out of hand. I did try to get away several times. You'll have to admit that."

  "Can I talk?" she asked.

  "Go ahead," I told her. "End of explanation."

  "Once we got away from the others — I mean, once we got here, why didn't you tell me?"

  "Because, little one, you are an extremely good-looking, well-constructed, female-type person. You are also, and I hope you'll forgive my saying this, just a wee bit hooked on things political. I wasn't about to take a chance on losing the old ballgame just for the sake of clearing up a few minor misconceptions. I'm probably as honest as the next guy, but I'm not a nut about it."

  "Danny?"

  "Yes?"

  "Do you really think I'm — what you said — good-looking?"

  I laughed and gathered her into my arms. I kissed her vigorously about the head and neck. "You're a doll," I told her.

  Later, back in bed, she nudged me with her elbow.

  "Hmmm?"

  "Danny, if you ever tell Joan that you haven't been in prison, I'll kill you. I'll just kill you."

  "Watch that, my little nasturtium of nonviolence. That kind of talk could get you chucked out of the Peace Movement right on your pretty, pink patootie."

  "Piss on the Peace Movement!" she said bluntly. "This is serious. Don't ever dare tell Joan. I'd be the laughingstock of the whole campus. Do you know that I turned down a date with the captain of the football team because I thought he was politically immature? I've got a reputation to maintain on campus, so you keep your goddamn mouth shut!"

  I howled with laughter. "We've got to do something about your vocabulary," I told her.

  "To hell with my vocabulary! Now I want you to promise."

  "All right, all right. Put the gun away. My lips are sealed. Whenever I'm around Joan I'll be an ex-con. I'll flout my prison record in everybody's face. But it's gonna cost you, kid."

  "Well, it's the only way I'll be able to hold up my head," she explained.

  After I drove her back to the campus and made a date for that night, I went on downtown to buy myself some clothes. A lot of my old things that I'd picked up the day before were too tight now — and probably a little out of date, though I really didn't much give a damn about that. I didn't want to go overboard on clothes, but I did need a few things.

  I had a fair amount of cash, the four hundred from the poker game, three hundred in mustering-out pay, and I'd religiously saved twenty-five a month while I was in the Army — about six hundred dollars there when I got out. I had maybe thirteen hundred altogether. The car and the rent and my share of the hunt and some walking-around money took me down to under a grand, but I figured I was still OK.

  It was kind of nice to go into the stores and try on the new-smelling clothes. I got a couple pair of slacks and a sport jacket, some shirts and ties and a couple pair of shoes — nothing really fancy.

  About one o'clock, I bagged on back out to the Avenue and dropped into Sloane's pawnshop. Sloane had a lot of new stuff in it as well as the usual sad, secondhand junk. I thought I could see the influence of Claudia there. I land of halfway hoped she'd be there so I could see her again.

  "Hey, Dan," Sloane said, "be right with you." He turned back to the skinny, horse-faced guy he'd been talking to. "I'm sure sorry, friend," he said, "but five dollars is as high as I can go. You saw the window — I've got wristwatches coming out my ears."

  "But I ain’t tryin' to sell it," the man objected with a distinct, whining Southern drawl. "I'd be in here first thing on payday to get it back. I jus' gotta have ten anyway. Y'see, m'car broke down and I had a feller fix it fer me, and now he won't give it back to me 'lessen I give 'im at least part of the money. That's why I just gotta have ten for the watch anyway."

  "I'm just as sorry as I can be, friend, but I just can't do a thing for you on that watch."

  "I noticed the prices you got on them watches in the window," the man said accusingly. "I didn't see no five-dollar watches out there."

  Suddenly I remembered another five-dollar watch not too long ago.

  "I'm really sorry, friend," Sloane said, "But I just don't think you and I can do business today."

  "That there's a semdy-fi'-dollar watch," the man said holding it out at Sloane and shaking it vigorously, "an' all I want is for you to borrow me ten fuckin' dollars on it for about ten measly little ol' days. Now I think that's mighty damn reasonable."

  "It could very well be, friend, but I just can't do 'er."

  "Well, mister, I'm agonna tell you som'thin'. They's just a whole lotta these here pawnshops in this here little ol' town. I think I'll jus' go out and find me one where they don't try to screw a feller right into the damn ground."

  "It's a free country, friend," Sloane said calmly.

  "You just ain't about to get no semdy-fi'-dollar watch off'n me for no five measly fuckin' dollars. I'll tell you that right now. And I can shore tell you one thing — you ain't gonna get no more o' my business. And I'm shore gonna tell all the fellers in my outfit not to give you none o' their business neither. It'll be a cold day in hell when anybody from the Hunnerd-and-Semdy-First Ree-con Platoon comes into this stingy little ol' place!"

  "I'm s
orry you feel that way, friend."

  "Sonnabitch!" the man growled and stomped out of the shop.

  Sloane looked at me and giggled. "I get sonofabitched and motherfuckered more than any eight other businessmen on the block," he said. "Stupid damned rebels! If that shit kicker paid more than fifteen for that piece of junk, then he really got screwed right into the ground."

  "Why didn't you tell him?"

  "Doesn't do any good. They'd a helluva lot rather believe that I'm trying to cheat them than that somebody else already has. That way they're smart, and I'm the one who's stupid."

  "That's a GI for you."

  "Yeah. He's got all the makings of a thirty-year man. Chip on his shoulder instead of a head. What can I do for you?"

  "I thought I'd look over your guns."

  "Sure — right over there in the rack behind the counter. Gonna decide which one to take on the hunt, huh?"

  "No, I thought I might buy one, if we can get together."

  "Well, now. A real cash customer." He hustled on ahead of me to the rack. "Here's a good-looking .270," he said, handing me a well-polished, scope-mounted job.

  "Little rich," I said, looking at the price tag.

  "I can knock fifteen off that," he said.

  'No. Thanks all the same, Cal, but what I've really got in mind is an old Springfield .30-06 military. That's a good cartridge, and I've got a little time to do some backyard gun-smithing."

  "Just a minute," he said, scratching his chin. "I think I might have just the thing." He led me back into the storage room and pulled a beat-up-looking rifle down off the top shelf. He looked at the tag attached to the trigger guard and then ripped it off. "I thought so," he said. "It's two weeks past due. That bastard won't be back." He handed me the gun. "I'll let you have that one for thirty-five dollars. It's a real pig the way it sits, but if you want to take a little time to fix it up, you'll have a good weapon."

  I took it out into the shop where the light was better and checked the bore. It looked clean, no corrosion. The stock was a mess. Some guy had cut down the military stock and then had painted it with brown enamel. The barrel still had the lathe marks on it. I glanced at the receiver and saw that it had been tapped and drilled for a scope. The bolt and safety had been modified.