by Harvey Click
He was staring at a large, mostly black canvas near the door, cut up like a child’s deformed paper snowflake. “Yes sir, this one gives me the royal heebie-jeebies right down to my toenails.”
He touched the ragged canvas, and Jason said, “She don’t want no one to touch them drawings.”
Mingo turned and smiled. “You afraid of her?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“You afraid of me?”
“Nope.”
“Sometimes it’s just plain damn stupid not to be afraid,” Mingo said. “You got a nice face, Jason. Be a pity for it to end up like one of these paintings.”
He smiled and left.
Part Two
A Fist-Sized Ball of Snot
Chapter Four
I’m up Shit Crick for sure, Jason thought. If Mingo don’t kill me Rue probably will.
The marijuana still had his head rocking up and down, and he noticed he had dropped the roach and it had burned a hole all the way through the sheet into the mattress. He forced himself up, visited the bathroom, and made his way down the book-strewn stairs.
He turned on the living room light and found his duffle bag tucked away in a corner beside the sofa. The clothes he’d been wearing weren’t in it, so he pulled out his extra pair of jeans and was sticking his left foot inside a leg when he heard a key turn in the front door.
Rue stepped in and stared at the pile of books while Jason danced around naked on one foot, his other foot still stuck in his jeans.
“Sorry ‘bout them books, ma’am. It was an accident.”
She didn’t say anything. She just stared at the books.
He managed to get both legs into the jeans, pulled them up and zipped them, and started fishing in the bag for a shirt.
“I don’t have a whole lotta money with me,” he said, “but I might could give you a little something for them. That is, if you gimme back my wallet that you stole. Some a them books look pretty old and beat up anyway, but maybe the new ones might be worth a little something.”
Rue’s eyes suddenly flashed from the books to his face. They burned with an icy green fire, like nothing he had ever seen before.
“Wasn’t my fault,” he said. “Your big black boyfriend come over and tried to scare me, and I slipped and fell on the steps ‘cause a him. It was all his fault, so maybe you better ask him to buy you some new books.”
She started toward him, and even though she was skinny the green fire in her eyes looked so mean that he darted out of her way. She grabbed his duffle bag, opened the door, and hurled it out to the yard.
“Out,” she said. She didn’t raise her voice, but somehow it sounded louder than a shriek.
“Sure thing,” he said. “Tell you what, I’ve had ‘bout enough a this stinking flytrap anyway.”
He sidled cautiously past her, and when he was safely out on the front porch he turned and said, “I want that wallet you stole and the rest a my clothes too.”
Something big and dark came flying out of the doorway and hit him in the face, and then the door slammed shut. It was his leather jacket.
He still didn’t have a shirt on, and the night air was cold. In the front yard, hidden from her view by the ugly tree with leaves like hands, he found a flannel shirt in his bag and put it on. As he was pulling on his jacket, his wallet fell out of a pocket. He carefully counted his money in the moonlight, then grabbed his bag and hurried to the sidewalk.
He felt all turned around in the dark but was pretty sure which way was north, so he trudged in that direction, then a block or two east, then north some more until at last he came to the outskirts of campus. He found his pack of Mail Pouch in his jacket pocket, put a ball of it in his cheek, and kept walking for a while more, wondering what he was going to do. He sat on a bench and wondered some more while he stared at a big bronze statue of a man dressed in a robe with green tarnish oozing down his shoulders like moss.
No one was walking around at this hour, and since he didn’t own a watch he wondered what this hour might be—maybe 2:00 or 3:00, he thought. He was cold and very hungry and still stoned, so stoned that if he moved his head it seemed to keep moving after it should have stopped. Even the statue seemed to move its head now and then, as if it was keeping an eye on him, maybe planning to lumber forward any minute and bash him with a big bronze fist.
“Wouldn’t surprise me none,” Jason mumbled.
He spat out his tobacco and stretched out on the bench, using his bag as a pillow. He pulled his jacket collar up around his neck, shut his eyes, and imagined he was squeezing Holly’s nice plump breasts.
“You and me best be getting outta here, Holly,” he mumbled. “This whole damn place is full a freaks.”
He awoke cold to the bone and damp with dew, the sun not yet high enough to provide any comfort. The big gray building guarded by the statue was already open, because he saw someone entering it, so he headed inside himself.
The place was a library according to the sign, and he wondered how many books it took to fill a huge building like this and wondered how there could be enough things worth saying to fill so many books. The thought made him feel even more depressed because he’d always found just the sight of books, especially big long books, grim and oppressive.
He found the restroom without any trouble, peed, and then stared at himself in the mirror. He looked awful, eyes puffy and bloodshot, hair sticking out every which way. He fished in his bag till he found his comb and thought he looked a little better after he got his greasy hair smoothed straight back and out of his face. He tore off Rue’s bandage so he could wash his hands and was surprised that the paper cut was already healed, just a thin pink line where the nasty gash had been.
Two men with beards came in, headed to adjacent urinals, and began to pee.
“You haven’t considered the intentionality, the aboutness,” the longer beard said. “You forget that consciousness is always conscious of something.”
“In a pig’s eye,” the shorter beard said. “It’s you who seem to forget the essential relationship of retention and protention to the intentional object. You are hopelessly mired in psychologism and physicalism. Hmm, hmm?”
“Hogwash! You’re confusing that which shows itself in something else with that which shows itself in itself. You seem woefully unable to distinguish between ontological being and existential being.”
“Poppycock!” the shorter beard said. “It’s you who confuse noetic and noematic experiences with the apperception of your own lived-body. It’s the sort of incomprehension I’d expect from one of my drug-addled freshmen. Hmm, hmm?”
“Rubbish! You have no concept of intersubjective verifiability nor the crucial distinction between solus ipse and the lifeworld. We are clearly told the cat is in the hat, and therefore the hat is the cat’s personal and intersubjective lifeworld, as even your densest freshmen should easily grasp, providing of course they had an astute professor.”
“Sir!” the shorter beard exclaimed. “You have just urinated on my shoe!”
Jason got out in a hurry. He walked across a big oval green crisscrossed with sidewalks and eventually found High Street and, better yet, a McDonald’s.
While he ate his three Big Macs and sipped his black coffee, he kept stealing glances at a young woman nibbling her French fries and he kept wondering if she was prettier than Holly. Yes, definitely prettier, but she didn’t have Holly’s soul, her sweetness, her whatever-it-was-ness that had pulled him off on this crazy search, and he felt a profound and painful poignancy while he chewed his third Big Mac and considered the great depths of his love for her whatever-it-was-ness.
Soon he was climbing the steps to Drew’s front porch. Outside the door, he could make out Drew talking:
“It’s queer the dream should have touched me the way it did. I suppose it’s the hair, and of course the date of birth.” There was a pause. “I feel a change coming on.”
Jason tapped lightly. There was a long pause before Drew asked, “Who is
it?”
“Jason.”
“Jason,” Drew repeated, and a moment later the door opened. “I didn’t expect you so early. I said no later than 9:30, but for God’s sake it’s not even 8:00.”
He was dressed in a blue bathrobe, his bare legs thin and hairy.
“Sorry, but some things come up,” Jason said.
“What things? Well, you may as well come in, of course. I expect my clients to be prompt, but that means not exorbitantly early as well as not late. You see, I’m a very busy man, every hour of my day is precisely arranged. My God, you look awful.”
Jason dropped his bag on the floor and fell heavily into the wooden armchair, which creaked irritably at the assault. There was a large tape recorder on the coffee table, a notebook and a cup of coffee beside it.
“Rue throwed me out and I had to go and sleep on a cold bench,” he said.
“Why on earth would she do that?”
“I dunno, ask her. Some man broke into her house and ruined her books and then she come home and blamed me. And I paid her good money for that room too. I want my damn money back.”
“My word,” Drew said.
“Yep. He had a gun too—calls himself Mingo.”
“That would be Jerry Mingler,” Drew said. “He’s a well-respected businessman, very up and up. He used to be Rue Anne’s employer, but they had a falling out some while back. I can’t believe he would damage Rue Anne’s books. Why, some of them are quite valuable.”
“Well, that’s ‘xactly what he did,” Jason said. “Seems like everyone ‘round here acts like I’m a liar.”
“I didn’t accuse you of being a liar, my dear boy. I’ll talk to Rue Anne later today and try to get this sorted out. I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation.”
“Look, I’ll give you a dollar if you let me take a hot shower,” Jason said. “I picked up a right nasty chill out there.”
“I don’t have a shower but I have a tub, and of course you’re free to use it. I’ll fetch you a towel.”
The tub was filthy but probably no filthier than Jason, so he didn’t bother to clean it. He felt much better after he bathed and shaved. The latter wasn’t really necessary since there’d been no more than a hint of soft blond down on his face, but he was a grown man now off on his own in the big world, and he figured men out on their own in the world should shave every day and also drink whiskey every day, and he decided he’d use his fake ID to buy a bottle of bourbon before the day was done.
When he came out of the bathroom, he found Drew had set up two folding TV trays in the living room, each with a cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and sausage links.
“Are you hungry?” Drew asked.
“I sure am. Ain’t had nothing to eat for must be twenty-four hours.”
He dug noisily into his food while Drew ate with quiet grace, touching the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin after nearly every bite. He had changed his bathrobe for a loud red and green Hawaiian shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. To Jason he looked like a mammoth and absurd infant in his wheelchair.
When they were done with their coffee, Drew said, “Now then, my dear boy, perhaps you could take these plates to the kitchen and wash them while I tend to a few small chores.”
He headed to the bathroom and Jason hurried to the kitchen, fearful that Drew would want assistance getting from his wheelchair to the toilet. The kitchen was filthy, the stained porcelain sink heaped high with dirty dishes and pans and the table cluttered with whiskey bottles and more dirty dishes. Jason rinsed the two plates and cups for a few seconds, wiped them with a towel he found wadded on the floor, and stuck them in a cupboard.
He examined each bottle on the table, thinking a couple good slugs of whiskey would be just the thing for a man out on his own in the world who’d picked up a nasty chill, but the bottles were irrevocably empty. He sat again in the creaking living room chair, drumming his fingertips impatiently against the arms and eavesdropping with disgust on the unwholesome sounds emerging from the bathroom.
At long last Drew emerged. He wheeled himself to the front door, took a Panama hat from the coatrack, placed it carefully on his big round head, and grabbed a fancy walking stick leaning against the doorframe.
“Well then, let us set forth as fearless soldiers on our difficult but noble quest,” he said, “braving all danger, peril and inclemency.”
“It’s kinda chilly out there,” Jason said. “You might need some long pants.”
“Is it?” Drew said. “This season is so changeable. I enjoy crisp air, but perhaps a jacket would be smart.”
He found a rumpled tweed jacket, and after he put it on he looked even more absurd in his shorts and Hawaiian shirt.
“I’m a great outdoorsman,” he said. “I get out every day, rain or shine. Well, maybe not in rain very often, but sometimes in a steady drizzle.”
Jason eased the wheelchair down a single step to the front porch, and then down four concrete steps to the sidewalk, smelling Drew’s Old Spice aftershave more strongly with each step, the same stuff he had smelled on his father during weddings, funerals, and the occasional courtroom appearance. It occurred to him he should start wearing some sort of cologne himself now that he was a man out on his own in the world, but not something fuddy-duddy like Old Spice. Maybe he would stop at a store and ask for something suitable for a young man on the go.
“How you do this by yourself?” he asked. “Get down these steps, I mean.”
“With difficulty.”
“Where we going?”
“Forth!” Drew aimed his stick in the direction of the university. “Ah, just feel that good morning sun! Yes, this is marvelous, the best part of the day. It was clever of you to come for me so early.”
When they reached High Street, he leaned back his big round head and sang:
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear—your true love’s coming!
A passing young woman stared at him, and he tipped his Panama hat to her and then turned his whole trunk to watch her recede, a foolish grin on his big round face.
“You see, my boy, I’m seeding the air with my song. I’m announcing to your mistress that her true love’s coming so she’ll be ready for you. It’s a way to hallow our search.”
He threw his head back again and sang:
Trip no further, pretty sweeting—
Journeys end in lovers meeting!
Now more people were staring and smirking, and Jason felt embarrassed. They came to an intersection, and he said rather crossly, “Where the hell are we going anyway?”
“To Mirror Lake.”
“Where’s that?”
Drew pointed at the university across High Street, and Jason pushed him in that direction as soon as the stoplight changed. Before long Drew wrapped his arms around his shoulders and shivered.
“My word, autumn certainly is prevalent in the air today,” he said. “I wish I had thought to put on some nice warm flannel trousers.”
Jason pushed the chair faster, afraid he’d be asked to return to the apartment and pull Drew up all those steps for a pair of pants. Soon they were on the large green crisscrossed with sidewalks. Students scurried this way and that, looking very self-important.
“This is the Oval,” Drew said. When they got to the middle of it, he pointed southwest, and eventually they came to a small lake surrounded by trees.
“We’ll sit here for a while,” he said.
Jason fell wearily onto a bench and said, “What makes you think Holly is going to come here?”
“My dear boy, I don’t recall saying that Holly would come here.”
“I thought you said we’re searching for her.”
“And so we are. You don’t seem to understand the basic principles of scientific searching, my boy. I drafted your astrological chart last night, and the stars spoke loudly and clearly. With their help, my job is to find the propitious place and time to enhance the good fortune of our sear
ch.”
“So you’re saying this is the place and the time?”
“Not quite and not yet. Please be patient, nothing is ever gained by having ants in your pants.”
Drew moved closer to the lake and leaned down to collect some pebbles. When he had a handful, he tossed one into the lake and then another.
“Every action we make has a permanent effect on all of creation,” he said. “You toss a stone and the long echoes go on forever. What I mean is, the ripples go on forever—theoretically at least—until they become too transformed to identify. Well, maybe not as a matter of physics. Hmm. I should look it up.”
He examined the water to see what the ripples were doing.
“Mirror Lake,” he said. “A name Narcissus would appreciate. It used to be fed by a mysterious spring, but then the mysterious spring mysteriously dried up. Now it’s a foul little cesspool—last year a student swam in it and got typhoid.”
“Look here, Drew, I got problems. I can’t just sit ‘round here yakking all day.”
Drew frowned. “Problems, problems, on a nice day like this. Tell me, Jason, have you ever heard of Dick and Dee Dee?”
“Nope.”
“No, I suppose you listen to the Beatles, don’t you?”
“Nope.”
“No, I suppose even the Beatles are a bit before your time. How very young you are, and yet you think you know so awfully much. Nobody seems to remember Dick and Dee Dee these days. And that fine old song ‘A Little Bit of Soap’—who was it by? I think the Jarmels.”
He threw his head back and started singing some weird song about how he couldn’t wash his tears away with soap and how he kept calling out some woman’s name through the lonely years and a bunch of other sad and miserable stuff. He was singing very loudly, and students grinned and tittered as they walked by.
Jason squirmed impatiently and stuck a wad of tobacco in his mouth. Obviously Drew was insane like everybody else in this town, and he bitterly regretted having given this lunatic his money. At last the song ended, and Drew stared off into the distance as if he had no idea where he was.