The heat added a new dimension to his discomfort. Perspiration irritated the relatively new scar tissue on his hip, and he sometimes writhed from the phantom pain of the missing leg. The swimming that was a part of his therapy helped, but ten minutes after he had pulled himself out of the pool, he was sweltering again.
Only at night, when there was sometimes a slight breeze, could he find any kind of comfort. He would sit on his rooftop stupefied by lack of sleep and watch the streets below.
“Hello? Are you up there?” It was the girl from downstairs. She stood one midnight on the sidewalk in front of the house, looking up at the roof.
“Yes,” Raphael said, looking over the railing.
“Would it be all right if I came up? I’m suffocating in there.”
“Sure. The stain are on the side.”
“I’ll be right up.” She disappeared around the corner of the house. He heard her light step on the stairs, and then she came out onto the roof. “It’s like a stove in my apartment,” she said, coming over to where he sat.
“I know. Mine’s the same way.”
“I’ve got a fan, but all it does is move the hot air around. If I take off any more clothes, I’ll get arrested for indecent exposure.” She wore a light housecoat and kept her arms crossed tightly in front of her body.
“It’s brutal,” Raphael agreed, “and it’s probably not going to get any better for a while.”
Up the street one of Heck’s Angels was fighting with his girlfriend. They stood on the lawn, screaming obscenities at each other.
“Does that go on all the time?” the girl asked.
“More or less.”
“Aren’t there an awful lot of them living in that house?”
“Fifteen or twenty. It varies from week to week.”
The young man up the street got into his car, slammed the door, and roared away. The girl on the lawn screamed at him until he turned the corner. Then it was quiet again.
The girl from downstairs sank down onto the small bench Flood had brought up to the roof a few weeks ago and laid her arm on the railing. “This is a fun neighborhood,” she said dryly.
“That it is.” Raphael thought briefly of telling her about the losers—simply to pass the long hours until things cooled down enough to allow two or three hours of sleep just before dawn—but he decided not to. He didn’t know her that well, and he didn’t want to take the chance of offending her.
They sat in the silent darkness on the roof, watching the children loitering on corners or creeping furtively around the houses.
“Is your husband out of town?” Raphael asked finally.
“I’m not married.”
“I’m sorry. I just assumed—” He stopped, embarrassed.
“Because I’m pregnant? You don’t have to be married to get pregnant. It happens in the best of families these days.”
“I’m not being nosy. It’s none of my business.”
She laughed. “In a few months it’ll be everybody’s business. It’s a condition that’s pretty hard to conceal.”
“Things’ll work out.”
“Sure they will. Nothing like a little unwed pregnancy to add spice to a girl’s life.”
A police car cruised by, and there was the usual scramble out the back doors of the neighborhood.
The night wound on, still hot and close, and, as the losers began to seek their beds for a few hours of restless sleep, the crickets and tree frogs began to sing the raspy song of summer.
Lulled by their song, Raphael caught himself half dozing in his chair a few times.
The girl talked about many things—mostly about the little town near the Canadian border where she had grown up. Her voice was soft, almost dreamy, and in his weariness Raphael listened not so much to her words as to the soft murmur of her voice.
“It’s all so trite,” she said. “It’s almost like a bad soap opera. Poor little girl from Metalline Falls comes to the big city to go to college. Girl meets boy. Boy seduces girl. Girl gets pregnant. Boy runs away. I feel like the heroine in one of those gloomy nineteenth-century novels we used to have to read in high school. I guess I’m supposed to drown myself or something.”
“I don’t particularly recommend it. That river over there’s got a fierce current to it. You could get yourself pretty thoroughly beaten up by all the rocks in the process.”
“You’ve got a point there.” She laughed. “Drowning yourself in the Spokane River could be a pretty hectic experience. I checked out a couple of those homes they have, but I don’t think I’d Eke that. The girls all looked kind of pale and morning-sicky, and the nuns are very kind and maternal, but you can see that they disapprove. I just don’t feel like being disapproved of right now.”
“Do you plan to keep the baby?”
“Of course. I’m not going to go through all of this and then not have anything to show for it.” She fell silent again.
Quite clearly, almost like the obvious plot of a piece of bad fiction, Raphael could see the girl’s life stretched out in front of her. The baby would come at its appointed time; and because there was no alternative and a baby must be clothed and fed and suitably housed, the girl would turn to those social agencies that even now lurked on the horizon waiting for her. The agencies were very kind,
very understanding, but they demanded of their clients a certain attitude. First of all there must be no pride, no dignity. The girl would have to learn to grovel. Groveling is one of the most important qualifications for welfare recipients. Once she had been taught to grovel in front of the desks of superior young ladies with minimal degrees in social science, she would almost be ready to join the ranks of the losers. With her pride and self-respect gone, she would be ready to accept the attentions of one of the horde of indolent young men who can smell a welfare check the way a shark smells blood. Her situation would quickly become hopeless, and her humor and intelligence would erode. She would begin to court crisis out of sheer boredom, and any chance for meaning or improvement would be blown away like dry leaves in the first blast of winter.
“Not this one,” Raphael murmured more to himself than to any blind, impish gods of mischance.
“What?” the girl asked.
“Nothing. Do you have to stay here—in Spokane, I mean?”
She shrugged, and Raphael almost ground his teeth at the futility of the gesture. Indifference was the first symptom of that all-prevalent disease that infested the streets below. If she was to be salvaged, that would have to be attacked first.
“The hospitals are good,” she said, “and I’m going to need a hospital before the year’s out.”
“There are hospitals everyplace, and it’s not like you were going to be going in for brain surgery, you know.”
She shrugged again. “Spokane’s as good as any place—certainly better than Metalline Falls. I couldn’t go back there.”
“Why not?”
“I just couldn’t. You don’t know small towns.” “I know big ones,” he said grimly.
The night was still warm, and the hot reek of dust still rose from the sun-blasted street below, and the crickets and tree frogs sang endlessly of summer as Raphael for the first time began carefully to attack the disease that until now he had only observed.
iii
One night, several evenings later, Flood came by with some beer, and he sat on the rooftop with Raphael, talking dispiritedly.
“I thought you were a martini man,” Raphael observed.
“I’ve fallen in with evil companions. Most of these cretins don’t know a martini from a manhattan. Besides, it’s too hot. Unless you swill it right down, a martini turns lukewarm on you in this kind of weather.”
“Nothing like a belt of warm gin to fix you right up.” Flood shuddered.
Down at the corner a motorcycle snarled and popped as Big Heintz made his appearance. He pulled up onto the lawn of the house up the street and stepped off his bike. “The Dragons are in town,” he announced to the Angels and
their women, who lounged in wilted discomfort on the porch.
“Dragons?” Raphael murmured. “What’s that big clown been smoking?”
“It’s a rival gang,” Flood told him, his voice tensing slightly. “They’re from Seattle. They come over here every so often, and there’s always a big fight.”
“Whoopee,” Raphael said flatly.
On the lawn Heck’s Angels gathered around Big Heintz, all talking excitedly. “Who seen ‘em?” Jimmy demanded.
“Leon was at the Savage House.” Heintz flexed his beefy shoulders. “He seen a couple of ‘em come in flyin’ their colon. The Mongol was one of ‘em.”
“Wow!” Jimmy said. “They mean business, then. The Mongol is one bad motherfucker. I seen ‘im a couple yean ago. He absolutely creamed Otto.”
“I ain’t afraid of that fuckin’ Mongol,” Heintz declared belligerently.
“Anybody know where they’re hangin’ out?” Little Hider asked.
“We’ll find ‘em.” Heintz said it grimly.
Jimmy ran into the house and came back out with a length of heavy chain. He swung it whistling around his head.
“This is it,” Big Heintz announced solemnly. “This is really it—the last and final war. Them fuckers been comin’ over here every summer. They find one or two of our guys and stomp ‘em, and then they all run back to Seattle. This time it’s gonna be different. This is gonna be the last and final war.” He strode up and down in front of the Angels, his beard bristling and his helmet pulled low over his eyes. “I sent out the word,” he went on. “Everybody’s comin’, and I mean everybody. This time them fuckers ain’t gonna find just one or two of us. They’re gonna find all of us, and it’s gonna be a war!”
They were all talking at once now, their voices shrill and excited. Several of the others ran into the house for chains and lengths of pipe and nail-studded baseball bats.
“You gonna take the Mongol, Heintz?” Jimmy asked breathlessly.
Heintz struck a dangerous pose. “Yeah. I’m gonna take that fuckin’ Mongol. I’m gonna waste that motherfucker. Somebody get my gear.” He tucked his thumbs into his belt and puffed out his chest. “Anybody that ain’t got the guts for real war better split now, ‘cause there’s gonna be blood, man, blood!”
Flood was breathing rapidly. Suddenly he stood up.
“Where are you going?” Raphael demanded.
“I thought I—” Hood broke off.
“What in God’s name is the matter with you, Damon? You don’t really care, do you? All they’re going to do is ride around looking tough, and then they’ll all get drunk and spend the rest of the night telling each other how mean they would have been. Don’t be childish.”
Flood stared at him, hard-faced, and then he suddenly laughed. “Shit,” he said, sitting back down. “This goddamn place is turning me into a ding-a-ling. You know? I was actually going down there. We’ve got to get out of this town, Raphael. It’s starting to percolate our goddamn brains.”
Two of the women came out of the house carrying Heintz’s implements of combat. He stood very straight while they solemnly put his nail-studded leather vest on him. Then they wrapped his thick waist several rimes around with a long length of heavy, tinkling chain. One of the women knelt reverently and tucked a long, sheathed knife into his right boot while the other attached a heavy length of taped pipe to the chain around his waist.
“I want you women to take the kids inside and bolt all the doors,” Heintz instructed. “Put stuff in front of the windows and don’t turn on no lights. Them bastards might try to come here an’ mess you up while we’re gone.”
With mute, almost worshipful respect Jimmy handed Big Heintz a can of beer. The big man tipped back his head, drained the can, and then threw it away.
“All right!” he roared. “Let’s go!”
With a clatter of chains and clubs the Angels piled into their battered cars or aboard their motorcycles. Their engines roared to life, and with smoking exhausts and screeching tires they blasted off, grim-faced, to that last and final war their leader had promised them. Their women, equally grim-faced, gathered the shouting children and retreated to the house, slamming the door behind them.
Big Heintz, his meaty arms proudly crossed, stood in splendid solitude on the now-deserted front lawn. Then slowly, majestically, girt in steel and leather, he strode to his bike, mounted, and tromped savagely down on the starter crank.
Nothing happened.
He tromped again—and again—and yet again. The big Harley wheezed.
“Come on, you bastard,” Big Heintz rasped hoarsely. “Come on, start]”
For ten minutes Big Heintz tromped, and for ten minutes the big Harley stubbornly refused to start. “Son of a bitch!” Heintz gasped, sweat pouring down his face. “Come on, please start!”
Finally, in desperation, he grasped the handlebars and pushed the heavy machine into the street. Running alongside, he pushed the balky bike along the empty street in the long-vanished wake of his departed warriors. At the end of the block he pushed it around the corner and was gone.
The street was silent again except for the strangled sound of Flood’s muffled laughter drifting down from the rooftop.
iv
“I’m not the least bit sorry for her,” Denise said. “It’s her own fault.”
“Come on, Denise,” Raphael objected.
“Come on, my foot. There’s a little pill, remember? If a girl gets pregnant these days, it’s because she wants to get pregnant. It’s just a cheap ticket to an early wedding. I’m glad it didn’t work. Next time she’ll know better.”
“She isn’t that kind of girl.”
“Really? Then how come she’s got a big belly?”
“Don’t be coarse.”
“Oh, grow up, Rafe,” she said angrily, slapping her dwarfed hand down on the table in irritation. “If she’s such a nice girl, why didn’t she keep her legs crossed? Why are you so concerned about what happens to some dim-witted trollop?”
“She’s not a trollop. That kind ofthing can happen. Young men can be very persuasive sometimes. Don’t be so Victorian.”
“You haven’t answered my question.” Her pale face was flushed. “Why are you so interested in her?”
Raphael took a deep breath. “All right,” he said finally. “There’s a disease on my street. It’s a combination of poverty, indifference, stupidity, and an erosion of the will. You could call it the welfare syndrome, I suppose. The people are cared for—they get a welfare check and food stamps. After a while that welfare check is the only important thing to them. They live lives of aimless futility—without meaning, without dignity. Society feeds them and puts them in minimal housing, and then it quite studiously tries to ignore the fact that they exist. But people are more than cattle. They need more than a bale of hay and a warm stall in some bam. The people on my street turn to violence—to crisis—in an effort to say to the world, ‘Look at me. I’m here. I exist.’ I’d like to salvage just one of them, that’s all. I’d like to beat the system just once. I’d like to keep one of them—just one—out of the soft claws of all those bright young ladies you warned me about—the ones who smother lives with welfare checks like you’d smother unwanted kittens with a wet pillow. That’s what my interest is.”
“You’re trying to save the world,” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“No. Not the world—just one life. If I can’t salvage just one life, I don’t see much hope for any of us. The social workers will get us all. That’s what they want, of course—to get us all—to bury us all with that one universal welfare check—to turn us into cattle.”
“And she’s pretty, of course,” Denise said acidly.
“I hadn’t really paid that much attention.” That was not entirely true. “She’s a human being. Frankly, I wouldn’t give a damn if she looked like Frankenstein.”
“But she doesn’t look like Frankenstein, does she?” Denise bored in.
“I didn’t notice any bolts
sticking out of her neck.” Raphael was starting to get tired of it.
“Why don’t you marry her then?” she suggested. “That’d solve everything, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It’s a perfect solution. You can marry her, and you can save her from the goblin social workers. You legitimize her bastard, and then you can spend the rest of your life looking for the bolts. I wouldn’t worry too much about that—” She pointed at his missing leg. “After all, a girl in her situation can’t afford to be too choosy, can she?”
“Why don’t we just drop this?”
“Why don’t we just drop the whole damned thing?” she said hotly. “Why don’t you get back to work? We’re not paying you to sit around and drink coffee and philosophize about saving the world; we’re paying you to fix shoes.”
His face tightened, and he got up without saying anything. He grabbed his crutches and stumped back toward his workbench.
“Rafe!” Her voice was stricken. He heard her feet, quick and light on the floor behind him, and then she had her arms around him and her face buried in his chest. He fought to keep his balance. “I’m sorry,” she wailed. The tiny hand, twisted and misshapen, clutched the fabric of his shirt at the shoulder, kneading, grasping, trying to hold on. He was surprised at how strong it was.
Denise cried into his chest for a few moments, and then she turned and fled, her face covered with her normal hand.
Raphael stood, still shifting his weight to regain his balance, and stared after her, his face troubled and a hollow feeling in his stomach.
He was still profoundly troubled when he got home that afternoon. He sat for several minutes in his car, staring vacantly out the window.
Hesitantly, old Tobe came out of the house across the street and walked over to Raphael’s car. For once he did not seem particularly drunk. “Hello, Rafe,” he said, his foghorn voice subdued.
The Losers Page 21